Students compete to design innovative spa

Four leading universities across Asia squared off in a spa design competition at the 5th Global Spa Summit in Nusa Dua on Wednesday.

The teams were challenged to showcase concepts to create a unique and profitable future spa.

The 2011 Student Strategy Challenge involved graduate student teams from business and hospitality management programs that work on innovative spa concepts that are also functional and profitable.

Participating teams were Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management in Singapore.

The team from Hong Kong Polytechnic University won the competition with their innovative mobile service spa called “Yi Spa on the go”, which targeted busy working people in large cities.

“The concept of Yi Spa focuses on comfort, wellness and flexibility to release the stress of people with less work-life balance,” said team member Joyce Ng Tin Yan.

“We offer a ‘spa in a van’ that we call ‘Yi Spa on the go’. The van is parked in a central business district area within five minutes walking distance from the restaurants where our target customers usually go for lunch.”

She said the idea of ‘on the go’ services came from a free-of-charge massage service offered in schools, in which chairs were set up in libraries for students.

The school’s assistant professor, Ada Lo, who assisted the team in their project, said the team did a lot of research not only in hotels, but also tried to assimilate ideas from many different places.

“We’re looking not only to what’s happening now, but also what’s going to happen in the future. Our concept also accommodates the increasing cost of operating spas in major cities,” she told The Jakarta Post.

Winning second prize was the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which offered a concept spa with traditional Chinese medicine. The team presented a spa located in a suburban hotel in Hong Kong, and took a holistic approach to well-being, with their design “Bringing the Outdoors In” that incorporated bamboo and contemporary Chinese elements in the spa’s interior.

The Gadjah Mada University team and the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management from Singapore both got third place.

“We offer a city spa concept, which is a spa set up in a busy area, for example Kuta and Legian in Bali. In line with our spa theme, ‘The Spice of Life’, we use Indonesian tropical herbal products to ‘spice up the customers’ life’,” said Primantoro, a team member from Gadjah Mada University.

The students also developed conceptual and financial details in their spa project and worked with high- profile professional architects who assisted and collaborated with the students in their designs.

“Students were tasked with devising a spa concept or business model that is not only imaginative and beautifully designed, but also totally feasible and profitable,” said Global Spa Summit board member Susan Harmsworth.

“We’re very impressed with the innovative ideas of the four teams. The judges had a hard time deciding the winner,” she said.

The students first competed against one another at their respective institutions. Each school’s winning team, along with their faculty directors, then presented their concept to the Global Spa Summit delegations and a panel of judges.

The competition was hailed as a wonderful opportunity to find the future leaders in the spa industry.