Top 10: the best spa hotels in Phuket
An insider's guide to the best spa hotels in Phuket, including the top places to stay for traditional Thai massages, meditation and yoga sessions, beauty treatments, wellness and detox programmes, hammams, pools and sensory showers, in locations including Kata Beach, Panwa Beach and Ko Yao Noi.
The Amanpuri hotel was the first in Aman’s ultra-luxurious hotel empire. Nearly 30-years on it is still arguably one of the best hotels in Thailand, if not Asia. Facilities include four fabulous restaurants, a seductive black swimming pool, an embarrassingly beautiful beach and a fleet of yachts, not to mention a seductive spa offering purifying scrubs, guided yoga and meditation sessions and the Royal Thai massage, created specially for Thailand's royal family.
The Mala Spa is a healing haven with eight pod-like treatment rooms set amidst flower and water gardens. Alongside traditional Thai therapies, it offers deeply moisturising body wraps, warming seaweed massages, snooze-inducing facials, as well as more unusual remedies like raindrop healing, energy re-balancing and integrative bodywork. Singing bowls, expert staff, and luxurious all-natural products from Siam Botanicals add to feeling of complete escape. Take full advantage by signing up for one of the three or six-day Holistic Living Programmes, which include a plethora of treatments, private fitness sessions and wonderful seasonal spa cuisine.
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With its swaying butterfly-filled gardens, honey-coloured beaches, swish hilltop infinity pool and Zen garden spa, Six Senses is a tropical island dream scene. The hotel's spa is located in a traditional, northern Thai-style village longhouse. As well as massages and beauty treatments, it offers guests a number of programmes for long-term wellness, such as yogic sessions, de-stress packages and detox and cleansing experiences. The latter encompasses the like of steam baths, clay wraps and purifying massages and facials.
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Squared-off terraces clinging onto the cliff-side for dear life give this boutique hotel a dangerously modern vibe. The only real public area is the bar, restaurant and pool, a minimalist cube with lots of white-on-white action – white umbrellas shading white sunbeds beside a white-tiled pool – all very Ibiza-esque. The furnishings are sleek and Italian-made but there is no mistaking that you’re in Thailand with that attention-grabbing Andaman Sea view. Elsewhere, the Infinite Luxury Spa lives up to its name with eight treatment rooms housing everything from zany energy pods to light-emitting treatment beds, which combine beautifully with Ila products and traditional Thai wellness philosophies.
The Anantara Phuket Layan is a classy new beach resort with a traditional Thai aesthetic – peaked roofs, wooden salas, gem-coloured soft furnishings – but with enough contemporary touches to keep it from feeling stuffy. Four bars and restaurants, a watersport centre, a couple of swimming pools and a hilltop wedding pavilion are artfully weaved into the verdant landscape. As with all Anantara Hotels, a sensational spa is part of the DNA, with seven lush treatment rooms, a salon and a host of visiting wellness practitioners dropping by.
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Sri Panwa is a rock star of a resort favoured by the likes of Snoop Dog and Rihanna. Dotted across its grounds are three pools, a beach, excellent restaurants and Baba Nest, one of the most gorgeous rooftop bars in Asia. There is also a boho spa where guests can indulge in a five-sense experience within four spacious treatment rooms, a private salon and a floating yoga deck – all with panoramic ocean vistas. Treatments are a combination of traditional and modern, with Thai and Indian massages, refreshing herbal exfoliation and soothing full body wraps among the options.
The Nai Harn's crisp modernist architecture looks as fabulous today as it did when it opened three decades ago. There’s a Mediterranean elegance to the look – a sea of white walls popped with colourful mosaics, eye-catching contemporary art, curvaceous furniture and bursts of bright pink bougainvillea. The vibe is calm and classy and the knee-trembling views of Phuket’s rugged southern coast will stick with you forever. The six room spa is fun and fruity, offering spray tans, ‘fitness’ facials and waxing, alongside more traditional coconut scrubs and Thai massages.
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Phuket Cleanse is nowhere near as big or fancy as some of Thailand’s other well-known health resorts – no yoga platforms with sea views or sleek air-conditioned studios here – but what this detox-focused hotel lacks in style it more than makes up for in character. Within 24-hours of arriving, guests meet with a nutritionist, a physiotherapist, and a fitness trainer who help tailor a programme to suit each individual’s needs. Guest numbers are restricted to a maximum of 18 at a time which means the fitness and weight-loss programmes are highly-personalised and the atmosphere high-motivational.
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Arriving at the lobby, you will stop in your tracks as you stare agog at a 55-metre infinity pool which seems to soar off into the sky and Andaman Sea. The look is Thai but understated with a smattering of gold-adorned pavilions, squared-off lily ponds and lush bloom-filled gardens. The serene spa provides holistic wellness retreat programmes and a number of wellness treatments, but its USP is undoubtedly the Thai Hammam Experience. This brings together traditional Turkish and Moroccan bathing practices and combines them with soothing, traditional Thai therapies.
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Privacy is assured and jet-setter levels of luxury are on offer at this tranquil beachside resort on Phuket's classy north-west coast. The Jara Spa is heavenly, with six serene treatment rooms and therapists trained at Wat Po Temple in Bangkok (the gold standard for Thai massage). Treatments include traditional scrubs and massages, as well as healing therapies such as reiki, craniosacral rebalancing and holistic kinesiology. Don't miss the Thai Thermal Massage, a deeply relaxing rub-down which will leave the knottiest of muscles as loose as ribbons.
