Park Hotel expands with EUR5m spa

Leisure A €5 million spa is the latest addition to one of Kerry's most established hotels. Orna Mulcahy reports.

The five-starPark Hotel in Kenmare, which attracts a clientele of wealthy American and Irish, is hoping to broaden its appeal among younger customers with a luxurious spa where guests will be pampered and pumelled and left to unwind in a glass box that extends into the woods overlooking the Beara estuary.

The spa, called Samas, is the brainchild of John Brennan, general manager of The Park and brother of proprietor Francis Breannan who opened the hotel in 1980. The Park, which numbers Bryan Ferry among its regulars, is one of the few hotels in Ireland that simply caters to its resident guests - there are no conference rooms and banqueting halls, just 46 bedrooms, a diningroom and lounge. It's been a traditional hotel, closing for the winter, except for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year. However, from 2004, The Park will open virtually all year round.

John Brennan first came up with the idea of a spa 18 months ago, but his original idea was simply to add a couple of treatment rooms. Instead he ended up commissioning a dramatic contemporary extension to the Victorian gothic style hotel.

"I went to a couple of trade fairs specialising in spas thinking that I might pick up some interesting products." says John Brennan. Then he ran into Susan Harmsworth, the founder and creator of Espa, a company that produces high quality spa products and designs spa centres in exotic locations around the world.

Harmsworth agreed to come to Kenmare and within hours they'd agreed on a plan - to build Ireland's first destination spa.

Brennan was keen to use an area of woodland beside the hotel as a setting. This meant excavating several tons of rock to make way for the two storey spa building. The rock didn't go to waste - it was cut down and used to create a wall that runs down the middle of the building.

There's a startling difference between the hotel and the spa.

The Park has a deliberately old fashioned feel, with its open fires, antique furniture, dimly lit corridors and landings and large high ceilinged rooms with dark furnishings and heavy drapes. By contrast, the spa has a totally contemprary feel. Designed by Michelle Sweeney of Oppermann Associates, it's a spectacular building with a light filled reception area and down below a floor with a darkened hallway leading to spacious dimly lit and sound proofed treatment rooms. Vistors, who arrive in fluffy bathrobes and slippers journey down a long corridor that echoes with the sound of running water. This comes from a wall of running water beside the staircase leading up to the reception area which has a wall of glass looking out over the woodland. The spa offers scores of different treatments including hot stone therapy, reiki and traditional massage as well many different facials. Each treatment includes time spent in a steam room or sauna, an outdoor plunge pool, and a relaxation room for after one's massage. Couples have the use of large suites with their own plunge pools.

The spa is for hotel guests only. "Ninety nine percent of spas are built on membership," says John Brennan, but we are a destination that is dedicated to well being and comfort for our guests alone. This puts it on a par with well known spas such as Miraval in Arizona, Canyon Ranch in Massachusets. The Brennans feel it will give the them the necessary edge in Kerry to bring in a whole new clientele. "When Francis opened in 1980 there were only about five five star hotels in Ireland; now there are 18 and four of those are within a 16 mile radius of the Park. With the hotel and the spa we have all of a sudded moved from a location competing with otheres to a totally unique destination."

However, if there's one fly in the ointment it's the weather. Basically we are blue sky spa in a grey sky location," says Brennan. While Samas has a varied outdoor programme, such as Tai Chi, woodland walks and meditation, not all of these will be possible in the Kerry climate.However, the real attraction of the Park is not the outdoors, but what goes on inside.

"We're a kick off your shoes, un pack and unwind place" says John Brennan. "The spa is part of that philosophy."