Overview

The recently-refurbished spa facility include:

• Open plan reception area
• Six new treatment rooms, including a double treatment room, with shower facilities in each room
• Large relaxation room to unwind before and after treatments, including complimentary tea, coffee, speciality drinks, and water, along with a selection of magazines
• A sleep room to indulge in after your spa experience day with ergonomic beds and headsets with music channel settings to your requirements
• Separate changing facilities to the club, including a locker with towel, bath robes, slippers and toiletries when booking a spa day experience
• Manicure and pedicure area with the option of upgrading to include a glass of champagne
• Elemis, Mii make up, and Jessica products

Hotel residents, and those enjoying a spa day experience, can also use:

• 15-metre ocean-view swimming pool
• Sauna
• Steam room
• Spa pool
• Gym

Review by European Spa

Hand Picked Hotels’ L’Horizon Hotel & Spa in Jersey has been redeveloped as a premier resort destination. European Spa talks to the team about the new spa and its expansion in the Channel Islands

Built in 1850, L’Horizon Hotel & Spa is located in a prime position on the white sands of St Brelade’s Bay, Jersey. Part of the Hand Picked Hotels group since 2001, the hotel has 106 bedrooms and boasts two restaurants including a double AA Rosette awarded fine dining restaurant, plus a large beachfront terrace. Its modern interiors are flooded with natural daylight, while its public spaces and most of the guest rooms, offer sea views and a refreshing sense of space.

Its position on the seafront with direct access to the beach makes it a natural favourite with leisure guests.

“Hotels like ours give people the chance to escape,” says Julia Hands, Hand Picked Hotels chairman and chief executive. “The leisure market is changing and it’s increasingly demanding spa. We’ve seen growth in our spa numbers over the past five to six years and it is demand-led; people want spa as part of their break.”

Indeed, the leisure market is a key focus for the hotel group which recently acquired the five-star Grand Jersey Hotel & Spa in St Helier, expanding its award-winning hotel portfolio to 21 properties. The deal was part of a strategic expansion by the brand, created by former lawyer turned hotelier Hands.

With three hotels in the Channel Islands, including the St Pierre Park & Golf Resort in Guernsey, the group is now a major player in the region’s spa and leisure market.

“L’Horizon has been important to us since 2001 and is a large part of our business,” explains Hands. “We then bought St Pierre Park in Guernsey which has 131 bedrooms and a small spa that we are hoping to expand soon to a larger, more sophisticated offering.

Then the Grand came on the market which sits well with the other two properties. We now have a large base in the Channel Islands with around 360 rooms. It’s a good solid piece of our portfolio.” 

Making plans

Prior to its recent refurbishment, the spa offering at L’Horizon covered 580sqm on the ground floor, with two treatment rooms, a pool, a steam room, a sauna and a gym. An earlier expansion in response to growing demand had seen a first-floor hotel guest room converted into a third treatment room, but the team undertook a further strategic overview of the business to identify greater opportunities.

“We have something at Hand Picked Hotels, called the Creating Competitive Advantage strategy, which looks at our market and all aspects of the businesses,” reveals Lesley Bacon, the group’s health club and spa manager. “We discovered that guests at L’Horizon come primarily for leisure. We were seeing a demand for treatments and had already expanded the number of treatment rooms to three, while the existing conference facilities got very little use. So, we conducted a feasibility study, looking at the costs and predicted revenues which were presented to the board and they were really supportive. They were already looking at this as a resort hotel and saw the need to improve the spa side of its facilities.”

After presenting the plans in October 2013, work on the redevelopment project started in February 2014. The soft opening in May allowed time for snagging and to introduce health club members to the new spa. Ready for the peak season in June, the spa proved an instant hit with hotel guests and members.

A total investment of £900,000 had added 300sqm to the first floor spa area, completely transforming the underused conference facilities into a modern spa, which reflects its location by the sea.

On the beach 

The spa’s beachfront location was a key part of the design brief, headed by Liz McNeill, director of 10 Design, a company familiar to Hand Picked Hotels.

“We have used 10 Design on projects in the past,” says Bacon. “This is the first spa project of this size, but it is a trusted relationship. Liz understands our company values; that’s very important.

“We were asked to maximise the number of treatment rooms, bring in manicure and pedicure spaces and the brief included a separate sleep room and relaxation area,” explains McNeill. “It’s not a big footprint, but when we started to play around with it on paper we realised it had lots of potential.”

The reception area is a welcoming, circular room with subtle references to the beach theme featuring sea urchin and shell-inspired art panels on the walls.

These are replicated throughout the spa, casting shadow effects with clever lighting.

“We wanted to create a flow through the spa while ensuring the spaces retained a soft and co-ordinated feel,” adds McNeill. “As we are on the beachfront, we wanted to bring that into the spa concept, creating a soft, tranquil environment, but not forgetting colour.”

The colour palette is based around teal blue to reflect the sea, contrasted with vibrant plum, which is set off by sandstone Amtico flooring. “Hand Picked Hotels love Amtico as a product,” says McNeill. “It’s pretty much maintenance-free. It’s not a tile, so you avoid noise issues on the floor below and throughout the spa. It’s also much quicker to lay; you simply draw up your measurements on a 2D plan which is then laser cut to your design.”

There were a few practical challenges with the build which meant a sea view from the upper area of the refurbished spa was not possible.

“We couldn’t physically have a sea-facing spa as there are bedrooms along the coastal side of the hotel,” admits Bacon. “We wondered if we could go to the roof, but there is a plant room up there.”

These restrictions led to the refurbished spa occupying the rear of the first floor. As with any historical property, adds McNeill, there were also some structural issues to attend too, but none that were insurmountable.

The spa journey

From the reception area, clients are taken through the manicure and pedicure area which features two custom-designed, built-in pedicure stations. The manicure table uses clever lighting and fine-strand curtain dividers to section off the space. Similar strand curtains create private areas in the relaxation room.

The subtle beach references continue, adding to a modern space fitted with relaxation loungers as well as a communal tea and water station.

The spa’s six treatment rooms feature the signature teal colour with touches of purple, making use of wallpaper crafted from fabric-backed vinyl with a natural hessian weave.

“There are subtle metallic hints through the panels which add a touch of light that is accented by some clever lighting design features,” McNeill describes. “The rooms all have concealed LED coffered lighting which is fully adjustable, depending on the type of treatment.”

Textured porcelain tiles with a sandstone effect have been used to finish the individual showers in each room and grey washed oak is the finish for the wood areas and concealed storage cupboards.

The final stage of the guest journey at L’Horizon is the sleep room, which was a pre-requisite of the brief and one of the most challenging aspects of the build, according to McNeill. “This room was a challenge,” she conceeds. “We had to have six treatment rooms and try to incorporate six beds into the sleep room. We couldn’t achieve six, but we managed five. The curtained strands offer some privacy; guests have their own space, an individual reading light and headphones with a multi-channel choice of music. A degree of privacy is maintained as there isn’t anyone facing you.”

The ground floor of the spa, which includes the sea-view swimming pool, sauna and steam room remains unchanged, though the gym space was expanded to include new Technogym equipment and it benefits from the installation of a large window offering sea views and natural daylight. 

Rising to the occasion

The spa’s clientele is split between hotel guests and the local market. There are 220 health club members at present, most of whom are avid spa goers. However, seasonal fluctuations mean that, understandably, guest expectation changes throughout the year.

“During high season, guests arrive, want to have a spa treatment, but are quick to return to the beach, they don’t linger in the spa,” says spa manager Suzanne Fontaine.

Operating at a maximum of 20 day-spa guests at any one time, the spa has a keen eye on the special occasion and events market, including birthdays, weddings and other celebrations. The addition of Mii cosmetics has given brides the option of makeup services in the spa, while Jessica is a great option for manicures and pedicures for this market.

“From a service point of view we tried to make it intimate and so you really feel you are looked after as a guest. It’s not a conveyor belt,” enthuses Bacon.

Spa lunch can be included in any package, taken in the spa lounge or enjoyed in the sun on the large terrace facing the sea. The management team has further earmarked leisure and wellness tourism as areas for growth, especially during the low season.

“We are looking to develop packages and breaks for UK residents, particularly in the winter months,’ explains Bacon.

Fontaine adds that increasing the spa’s health club membership and reaching out to the local market is equally important to maintaining guest numbers.

“We want to keep the business steady and our local clientele is vitally important to us,” she explains. 

Hi-tech facials

L’Horizon’s introduction of the Elemis Biotec facial is a first for the Channel Islands and also part of the growth strategy for the spa as it aims to increase its number of bookings for facial treatments. Indeed, the new Elemis signature facial formed the cornerstone of the spa’s marketing plan with newspaper promotions, pop-ups in the island’s capital, St Helier, and a social media campaign driving customer interest.

“We are trying to shift our guests over to the signature Biotec Facial,” says Fontaine. “It’s a big launch for Elemis and a first for the Channel Islands. People are now coming in and asking for it by name.” 

The benefit of experience

Having worked as a health club manager at a number of international resorts and with Hand Picked Hotels for the last eight years, Bacon was keen to implement a number of lessons she had learned about spa design and development; from practical things like preferring digi-locks to key locks in locker storage units to ensuring there was adequate storage space and the best quality treatment beds possible.

Most importantly, she concludes: “I think it’s important to keep an element of simplicity in the creation of a spa. Don’t go for anything too quirky. A successful spa must plan for longevity in the execution of not only its design, but also its broader function and, indeed its treatment menu.”

European Spa - January 2015

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