Clocking out to Turn Back Time—Vacations That Will Help You Live Longer

Booming demand for wellness tourism shows no slowing, with travel related to health and well-being projected to have reached $1 trillion last year and to hit $1.3 trillion by 2025, according to the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit based in Miami.

Curated wellness travel programs are especially sought-after, specifically holistic treatments focused on longevity. Affluent travelers not only are making time to hit the gym while gallivanting across the globe, they’re also seeking destinations that specifically cater to their wellness goals, including treatments aimed at living longer.

“I believe Covid did put a spotlight on self-care and well-being,” says Penny Kriel, corporate director of spa and wellness at Salamander Collection, a group of luxury properties in places like Washington, D.C., and Charleston, South Carolina. But Kriel says today’s spas are more holistic, encouraging folks to understand the wellness concept and incorporate it into their lifestyle more frequently.

“With the evolution of treatment products and technology, spas have been able to enhance their offerings and appeal to more travellers,” Kriel says.

While some growth is connected to the variety of treatments available, results and the digital world are also contributing to the wellness boom.

“The efficacy and benefits of these treatments continue to drive bookings and interest, especially with the support of social media, influencers, and celebrity endorsements,” Kriel says.

While genetics, environmental factors, and lifestyle choices such as regular exercise, a diet free of processed foods, sufficient sleep, and human connection play essential roles in living well and longer, experts believe in holistic therapies to help manage stress, boost immunity, and ultimately influence length and quality of life.

Anti Ageing and Beyond

“For years, people have been coming to spas, booking treatments, and gaining advice on how to turn the clock back with anti ageing and corrective skin treatments,” Kriel says. However, today’s treatments are far more innovative.

On Marinella Beach in Porto Rotondo, on the Italian island of Sardinia, guests at the five-star Abi d’Oru Hotel & Spa can experience the resort’s one-of-a-kind “longevity treatment,” a unique anti ageing facial using one of the island’s native grapes: Cannonau. The world’s first declared “Blue Zone”—one of five designated areas where people live longer than average, some into their 100s—Sardinia produces this robust red wine varietal, the most widely planted on the island.

Known as Garnacha in Spain and Grenache in France, Cannonau supposedly contains two to three times more antioxidants than other red-wine grapes. By incorporating Cannonau, Abi Spa says its unique 50-minute longevity session increases collagen production for firmer, younger-looking skin.

Maintaining a youthful appearance is just one facet of longevity treatments, which range from stress-reduction sessions like massage to nutritional support and sleep programs, Kriel says. Some retreats also offer medical services such as IV infusions and joint injections.

Keeping with the trend, Kriel is expanding Salamander Collection’s existing spa services, such as detox wraps and lymphatic drainage, to include dedicated “Wellness Rooms,” new vegan and vegetarian menu items, and well-being workshops. “Sleep, nutrition, and mindfulness will be a big focus for integration in 2024,” she says.

Data-Driven Wellness

Skyler Stillings, an exercise physiologist at Sensei Lanai, a Four Seasons Resort—an adults-only wellness center in Lanai, Hawaii—says guests were drawn to the social aspect when the spa opened in November 2021.

“We saw a huge need for human connection,” she recalls. But over the past few years, what’s paramount has shifted. “Longevity is trending much more right now.”

Human connection is a central draw for guests at Sensei Lanai, an adults-only and wellness-focused Four Seasons Resort in Hawaii.
Sensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort

Billionaire co-founder of tech company Oracle Larry Ellison and physician and scientist Dr. David Angus co-founded Sensei. After the death of a mutual close friend, the duo teamed up to create longevity-based wellness retreats to nurture preventative care and a healthy lifestyle. In addition to the Lanai location, the brand established Sensei Porcupine Creek in Greater Palm Springs, California, in November 2022.

Sensei has a data-driven approach. The team performs a series of assessments to obtain a clearer picture of a guest’s health, making wellness recommendations based on the findings. While Sensei analyses that data to curate a personalised plan, Stillings says it’s up to the guests which path they choose.

Sensei’s core three-day retreat is a “Guided Wellness Experience.” For spa treatments, each guest checks into their own “Spa Hale,” a private 1,000-square-foot bungalow furnished with an infrared sauna, a steam shower, a soaking tub, and plunge pools. The latest therapies include Sarga Bodywalking—a barefoot myofascial release massage, and “Four Hands in Harmony,” a massage with two therapists working in tandem. Sensei Guides provide take-home plans so guests can continue their wellness journeys after the spa.

Sensei Lanai, an adults-only and wellness-focused Four Seasons Resort in Hawaii.
Sensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort

Sanctuaries for Longevity

Headquartered in Switzerland with hotels and on-site spas across the globe, Aman Resorts features an integrative approach, combining traditional remedies with modern medicine’s advanced technologies. Tucked behind the doors of the storied Crown Building in Midtown Manhattan, Banya Spa House at Aman New York—the brand’s flagship spa in the Western Hemisphere—is a 25,000-square-foot, three-floor urban oasis.

Yuki Kiyono, global head of health and wellness development at Aman, says the centre provides access to holistic and cutting-edge treatments benefiting physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being. Aman’s customisable “Immersion Programs” consist of a three- or five-day immersion. “The programs encompass treatments and experiences that touch every significant aspect to create a path for longevity, from meditation and mindfulness to nutrition and movement,” Kiyono explains.

Banya Spa House at Aman New York.
Robert Rieger

The spa’s “Tei-An Wellness Solution” features 90- to 150-minute sessions using massage, cryotherapy, and Vitamin IV infusions. Acupuncture is also on offer.

“With its rich history of Chinese Medicine, modern research, and the introduction of sophisticated electro-acupuncture medicine, acupuncture has been proven to assist with problems and increase performance,” Kiyono says.

Resetting the Mind and Body

Beyond longevity, “healthspan”—the number of years a person can live in good health free of chronic disease—is the cornerstone of Mountain Trek Health Reset Retreat’s program in British Columbia, Canada.

Kirk Shave, president and program director, and his team employ a holistic approach, using lifestyles in long-living Blue Zones as a point of reference.

“We improve our daily lifestyle habits, so we live vitally as long as we’re meant to live,” Shave says of the retreat. He built the program from an anthropological stance, referencing humans as farmers, hunters, and gatherers based on their eating and sleeping patterns. Food includes vegetable-centric meals sans alcohol, sugar, bread, or dairy.

Guests wake at dawn each day and have access to sunrise yoga, several hours of “flow” or slow hiking, spa treatments, forest bathing, calming crystal singing-bowl and sound therapy sessions, and classes on stress reduction—one of Mountain Trek’s primary goals. The program motivates people to spend much of their time in nature because it’s been proven to reduce cortisol, the stress hormone that can lead to inflammation and disease when elevated for extended periods.

While most guests aren’t aware of how immersive Mountain Trek’s program is when they arrive, they leave the resort revitalised after the structured, one-week program. Set in the Kootenays overlooking its eponymous river, the resort and adventure promise what Shave calls a “visceral experience of transformation.”

“They’re interested in coming to be in nature,” Shave says of the guests. “They hit a wall in their life and slipped backwards, so they know they need a reset.”

Banya Spa House at Aman New York provides access to holistic and cutting-edge treatments benefiting physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being.
Robert Rieger

This article first appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Mansion Global Experience Luxury.

Developer efforts to convert emptying office towers into residential buildings have largely gone nowhere. That may be finally changing.

The prospect of transforming unused office space into much-needed housing seemed a logical way to resolve both issues. But few conversions moved forward because the cost of acquiring even an aging office building remained too high for the economics to pencil out.

Now that office vacancy has reached record levels, sellers are willing to take what they can. That has caused values to plunge for nothing-special buildings in second-rate locations, making the numbers on many of those properties now viable for conversions.

Seventy-three U.S. conversion projects have been completed this year, slightly up from 63 in 2023, according to real-estate services firm CBRE Group. But another 309 projects are planned or under way with about three-quarters of them office to residential. In all, about 38,000 units are in the works, CBRE said.

“The pipeline keeps replenishing itself,” said Julie Whelan , CBRE’s senior vice president of research.

In the first six months of this year, half of the $1.12 billion in Manhattan office-building purchases were by developers planning conversion projects, according to Ariel Property Advisors.

While New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are leading the way, conversions also are popping up in Cincinnati, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. A venture of General Motors and Bedrock announced Monday a sweeping redevelopment of Detroit’s famed Renaissance Center that includes converting one of its office buildings into apartments and a hotel.

In Cleveland, 12% of its total office inventory is either undergoing conversions or is planned for conversion. Many projects there are clustered around the city’s 10-acre Public Square. The former transit hub went through a $50 million upgrade about 10 years ago, adding fountains, an amphitheater and green paths.

“You end up with so much space that you paid so little for, that you can create amenities that you would never build if you were doing new construction,” said Daniel Neidich, chief executive of Dune Real Estate Partners, a private-equity firm that has teamed up with developer TF Cornerstone to invest $1 billion on about 20 conversion projects throughout the U.S. in the next three years.

Conversions won’t solve the office crisis, or make much of a dent in the U.S. housing shortage . And many obsolete office buildings don’t work as conversion projects because their floors are too big or due to other design issues. The 71 million square feet of conversions that are planned or under way only account for 1.7% of U.S. office inventory, CBRE said.

But city planners believe that conversions will play an important part in revitalising depressed business districts, which have been hollowed out by weak return-to-office rates in many places.

And developers are starting to find ways around longstanding obstacles in larger buildings. A venture led by GFP Real Estate is installing two light wells in a Manhattan office-conversion project at 25 Water St. to ensure that all the apartments will get sufficient light and air.

Cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Calgary, Alberta, have started to roll out new subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives to boost conversions.

The projects are breathing new life into iconic properties that no longer work as office buildings. The Flatiron Building in New York will be redeveloped into condominiums. In Cincinnati, the owner of the Union Central Life Insurance Building is converting it into more than 280 units of housing with a rooftop pool, health club and commercial space.

In the first couple of years of the pandemic, office building owners were able to hold on to their properties because of government assistance and because tenants continued to pay rent under long-term leases.

As leases matured and demand remained anaemic, landlords began to capitulate and dump buildings at enormous discounts to peak values. In Washington, D.C., for example, Post Brothers last year paid about $66 million for 2100 M Street, which had sold for as much as $150 million in 2007.

Washington, D.C., has been particularly hard hit by the office downturn because the federal government has been especially permissive in allowing employees to work from home .

“We’re able to make it work as a conversion because it was no longer priced as though it could be repositioned as office,” said Matt Pestronk , Post’s president and co-founder.

Increasingly, more deals are taking place behind the scenes as converters reach deals with creditors to buy debt on troubled office buildings and then push out the owners. GFP Real Estate reduced costs of its $240 million conversion of 25 Water Street by buying the debt at a discount and cutting deals with tenants to exit the building before their leases matured.

One of the first projects planned by the venture of Dune and TF Cornerstone likely will be the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia. TF Cornerstone just purchased the debt on the office space in the building and is in the process of taking title.

“The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales,” said Neidich, Dune’s CEO. “There’s a ton of it going on.”

In Washington, D.C., a conversion of the old Peace Corps headquarters building near Dupont Circle is 70% leased just four months after opening, said developer Gary Cohen . Rents are higher than expected.

“If that’s the way to get people downtown, that’s what we have to do,” Cohen said.

Not all developers agree that the economics of conversions work, even at today’s low prices. Miki Naftali , who has converted more than five New York properties over the years, said he has been very actively looking at conversion candidates but hasn’t yet found a deal that works financially.

One of the issues facing converters is that even if an office building is dying, it often has a few existing tenants who would need to be relocated. Some buildings would need atriums to ensure that all the apartments have sufficient light and air.

“When you start to add everything up, if your costs get close to new construction, that’s when you get to the point that it doesn’t make financial sense,” Naftali said.

Some landlords are including clauses in leases that give them the right to evict tenants to make room for a major conversion. Others are keeping a small ownership stake when they sell buildings so that they can learn the conversion process for future buildings.

“The world is looking at these assets in a different way,” said developer William Rudin , whose company decided to learn the conversion process by keeping a stake in 55 Broad Street, a downtown New York office building it sold last year to a converter.

Clocking out to Turn Back Time—Vacations That Will Help You Live Longer

Office-to-residential conversions are gaining traction, helping revitalize depressed business districts