Hotels and travel destinations are now bridging the topic of longevity, helping guests increase lifespan with highly targeted and scientific treatments in the most luxurious of settings
Isabella Craddock
There was a time when a hotel spa offered just massages and facials, relaxing therapies to brighten, tighten and destress. But now, hotels, and hotel spas, in particular, are retreats in themselves, moving away from skin-deep therapies to a new advanced focus on longevity and increasing lifespan, offering treatments that were once the preserve of doctors’ offices and specialised medical clinics.
At Dubai’s new One&Only One Za’abeel, the Longevity Hub by Clinique La Prairie is bringing the pioneering technology of its Switzerland mothership to the UAE for the very first time. Guests can book a ‘Longevity Assessment’, a 40-minute process involving questionnaires and scans revealing a score based on energy, beauty, immunity and more. From here, a treatment plan is devised – be it during the guest’s hotel stay or a lengthier plan for Dubai residents. Following a diagnosis of, say, low energy or beauty, a factor linked to stress, lack of sleep and dehydration, treatments like cryotherapy, infrared saunas, IV drips and a crystal massages are recommended – penetrating the muscles with healing stones.
Clinique La Prairie has long pioneered preventative healthcare, stemming from its clinics in Switzerland and across the globe. Treatments and services offered at the hub in Dubai include Longevity therapies such as neurowave stimulation, cryotherapy, far infrared and IV drips. The hub also focuses on aesthetics and wellbeing, with treatments and therapies including mesotherapy, hyaluronic acid, botox, laser treatments, micro-needling, lymphatic face drainage, massages and more.
‘The pandemic has made us well and truly prioritise health. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our research shows that, as a result, 92 per cent of people are now consciously taking better care of their health,’ says Clinique La Prairie CEO, Simone Gibertoni on the move into a new era of luxury and wellness. ‘Our Longevity Hubs are dedicated to unlocking lasting vitality thanks to its unique tailored approach that combines the latest in transformative health science and cutting-edge aesthetics. There is a demand for more personalised, more meaningful and all-encompassing preventive healthcare. Not only that but there is a need for an approach that allows us to follow clients “along their health journey” – not just for spot programmes.’
Dubai’s Clinique La Prairie is the second in the region, following the opening of the Doha Longevity Hub at The St Regis Marsa Arabia Island, The Pearl Qatar, in August 2023. The same treatments around longevity, aesthetics, and wellbeing with the same membership structure. Other regional hotels are following suit – Fairmont Doha launched the world-leading Fairmont Fit with a Pillar Membership Program in 2022, and the soon-to-be-opened Sha Emirates will have 10,000 square metres of clinic area.
Many treatments at Clinique La Prairie’s Longevity Hub specifically focus on brain health and AI-driven medicine – two trends Gibertoni reveals are shaping the future of longevity. ‘It has emerged as a growing trend due to increased awareness that the brain is interconnected with many other factors in bodily health,’ says the CEO. ‘This is also linked with mental health concerns and growing numbers of age-related cognitive.’
With this in mind, Clinique La Prairie has just launched a new programme, ‘Brain Potential’ – focusing on optimising brain functions and enhancing cognitive health. ‘The second trend considers an individual’s genetic makeup, medical history, lifestyle and environmental factors to form a treatment plan, the Clinique La Prairie CEO explains. ‘Artificial intelligence can add a highly interesting layer for our physicians to tailor prevention strategies to a guest’s specific needs,’ he adds. Still under wraps, the Clinique La Prairie team is also working on an assessment powered by AI, but for now, it uses an epigenetic evaluation in collaboration with Genknowme – a life science company specialising in analysing the effects of lifestyle on biological age and how these processes are closely linked with the reversible effects of our daily choices on genes.
Other treatments at the Dubai Longevity Hub include AudioVitality®, a unique, innovative technology that involvesexposuretolow-frequency,continuousstimulation in a sound-proofed environment. Producing physical, biological, neural and mental systemic stimulations that affect health, wellbeing, performance, and ageing, the treatment stimulates the body’s natural capacity to heal.
Just across the towering structure, a new wellness- focused hotel, Siro One Za’abeel, is taking this approach to new levels – where the hotel itself centres around fitness and wellness spaces. There’s a sprawling gym, studios, and recovery lab – where treatments include the MLX i3Dome Detox concept (an MRI-like machine focused on detoxification from the inside out), dry needling, electro-muscle stimulation and IV therapy. The quest for longevity is nothing new, but the surge in advanced clinics in beautiful destinations makes it that much easier, something we’re sure to see more locations embrace.
This article originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Near+Far
