Omtrips Weekly · #4 · 15 September 2026

Omtrips Weekly, Edition 4: Fivelements goes global, and recovery becomes infrastructure

Sovereign wealth backs retreat hospitality, regulators sketch the road to access, and bathhouses keep opening. Here is the week.

The Big Story

Fivelements Goes Global, and Sovereign Wealth Comes With It

Spa Business9 Sep 2026

GOCO Hospitality has revealed a four-country expansion for Fivelements, the brand that helped define plant-forward, healing-led retreat hospitality in Bali. Koh Samui lands first in early 2027 as the new flagship: two beachfront hectares, a 900sq m longevity center run by the OLiv clinic with four certified doctors, thermal and rainforest bathing, and an ocean-view yoga shala. A converted Swiss sanatorium at Leysin follows in 2029 with 60 keys, 29 chalets and 4,000sq m of wellness space, then an alpine wellness community in Montenegro's Biogradska Gora in 2030, while Fivelements Ubud relaunches in 2028 with 11 new waterfront villas. Backing comes from Fullerton Fund Management, a Singapore sovereign wealth subsidiary, which tells you how seriously institutional money now takes retreat-first hospitality.

Retreats

Thirty Biomarkers Before Breakfast: Seychelles Goes Clinical

Spa Business10 Sep 2026

Waldorf Astoria Seychelles Platte Island has put a 60-minute, non-invasive biometric screening at the center of its spa, reading more than 30 markers across body composition, cardiovascular fitness, recovery, metabolism, immunity and nervous system function. Results then shape two multi-day journeys, Restore and Purify, offered over 3, 5 or 7 days from 2,200 euros per person, blending Ayurvedic treatments with contemporary practice. "We start with the individual rather than a fixed idea of wellness," says assistant spa director Hemant Gahlot. For hosts, it is a clean template: measure first, program second.

Ten Saunas on an Edinburgh Promenade

Spa Business11 Sep 2026

Soul Gathering returned for a second edition at The Pitt on Granton Promenade in Edinburgh, one day running 10am to 9pm with ten saunas, rituals led by masters from Lithuania, Ireland, Finland, Scotland and England, plus breathwork, yoga, craft workshops and massage. Mikkel Aaland, photographer and co-founder of the disaster-relief charity Sauna Aid, gave a fireside conversation on nearly five decades documenting bathing cultures worldwide. Day tickets were 75 pounds. "Over the last few years we've watched sauna culture in Scotland grow at an incredible pace," said founder Kirsty Carver, and the day-format gathering is a low-overhead model worth studying.

Equinox Adds Hypnotherapy for the Overloaded Mind

Spa Business13 Sep 2026

The Spa by Equinox Hotel Hudson Yards in New York has added Hypnotherapy for High-Performers, a 90-minute session at US$350 led by cognitive wellness coach and hypnotherapist Anita Hodosi, using guided subconscious work, deep meditation and reframing to settle the nervous system and clear mental overload. It follows the property's Sleep Lab, built with sleep scientist Matthew Walker. "High-Performance Hypnotherapy expands our approach to inner performance," says Ara Patterson, director of food and beverage and spa. Guests will pay premium rates for mind-side modalities, not only hands-on treatment.

Plant Medicine & Psychedelic Research

The FDA Maps a Faster Road to Psychedelic Medicines

Marijuana Moment14 Sep 2026

Four FDA staffers published the agency's framework for psychedelic drugs in the New England Journal of Medicine, in the same week the FDA held a public hearing gathering testimony from researchers, advocates and industry. The approach leans on rolling and priority review, initial approvals resting on 12-week efficacy evidence with 12-month blinded follow-up, possible risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, and standardized clinical practice for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The officials framed the urgency against a mental health crisis that "continues to worsen," and noted the long traditional and spiritual use of compounds including psilocybin and DMT. It is the clearest public sketch yet of what a regulated path to access actually looks like.

New Zealand Names Its First MDMA Prescribers

Psychedelic Alpha7 Sep 2026

Medsafe has approved two New Zealand psychiatrists, one of them Dr. Gary Wynn, to prescribe and administer MDMA for PTSD inside a wider psychotherapy program, turning the country's regulatory opening into real clinical capacity. Applicants must show substantial expertise and detailed safety protocols, and the three-dose protocol caps each prescriber at roughly 15 patients a year. There is no public funding yet: patients pay around NZ$15,000 out of pocket, and the first approval took 13 months. "This is a start," Wynn said, which is the honest scale of it.

"Enormous Demand" Coming, Says the US Health Secretary

Marijuana Moment11 Sep 2026

Speaking on his own podcast with Bryan Hubbard of Americans for Ibogaine, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. predicted "an enormous demand" for psychedelic therapies once they are legally available, particularly among veterans, and noted a single veteran's course could require more than 100 hours of support staff. He praised this year's executive order to speed research and access, alongside an HHS and VA research partnership and the FDA's finalized guidance. The staffing arithmetic is the part worth rereading: supervised therapy is labor-heavy, and that shapes where and how it can ever be delivered.

New Stays

The Hoxton Opens Its First Wellness Club, in Dubai

Sleeper8 Sep 2026

Ennismore and Select Group are bringing The Hoxton to Dubai Media City with 230 rooms and interiors by AIME Studios, the brand's first Middle East address. The headline is the Wellness Club, a first for The Hoxton anywhere: gym floor, movement studios, spa treatment rooms, contrast therapy, a members' lounge and the Beaum healthy cafe concept. Food and beverage is curated by Paris Society across five venues including a Japanese handroll bar with chef Moise Sfez and a rooftop, Tope.

London Gets a Fine Bathing and Dining Club

Spa Business8 Sep 2026

Sonara opens later in 2026 on King's Road in Chelsea across 1,500sq m and two floors, billed as London's first fine bathing and dining club. Each guest keeps a permanent table in an 80-cover dining room and moves between it and a 30-person oak-lined banya, snow room, red salt grotto, hammam, cold plunge, flotation room and hyperbaric oxygen chamber, dining in a robe between bathing cycles. Four private suites of roughly 90sq m each carry their own themes: English country house, Moroccan riad, Chinese courtyard, alpine chalet. Developed by Crosstree Real Estate with architects Squire and Partners.

Six Suites on a Kalahari Dune, Inside a National Park

Sleeper9 Sep 2026

Spanish family-owned Vestige Collection goes international with Vestige Xaudum, six suites on a sand dune above an ancient fossil riverbed and the only lodge inside Khaudum National Park in northern Namibia, opening March 2027. Facilities stay deliberately small: spa, open-air fitness deck, 78sq m pool, solar with battery storage, thatch sourced from surrounding villages and local craftspeople on the build. It is the first of four planned lodges forming a Vestige Namibia circuit, designed in-house by Vestige Estudio.

Maisons Pariente Opens Saint Roch in Courchevel 1850

Sleeper11 Sep 2026

Saint Roch is the group's fifth address and second alpine property, opening winter 2026 on the Bellecote piste with 37 rooms and suites by Friedmann & Versace. Wellness runs to an Ottoman hammam and a spa inspired by Caucasian palaces, with indoor pool, marble mosaic shower and fitness space. Interiors nod to Slavic dachas and Persian design. "We wanted Saint Roch to be a place you come to as much for what you feel as for what you see," the co-founders said.

Hard Rock Lands in Malta With 3,800sq m of Wellness

Spa Business9 Sep 2026

A 350 million euro, 397-key resort has opened at St George's Bay under Hard Rock's first Malta flag, developed by Db Group, with 3,800sq m of wellness gathered under a concept called Sound Body. Inside: an 1,800sq m Rock Spa with 11 treatment rooms, a Body Rock gym, Rock Om yoga, plus sauna, steam room, salt room, hot tub, ice bath and heated benches. Eleven pools include a guitar-shaped one and a rooftop cantilever, and local memberships run 42 to 55 euros a month by season.

Industry & Destinations

Hilton Builds Recovery Into the Building

Spa Business14 Sep 2026

Signia Restore folds recovery, fitness and wellness retail into one connected space instead of scattered amenities, debuting at Signia Hilton Indianapolis with reservations from January 2027 and a rollout to select Signia properties globally. Rottet Studio split it into two zones: physical reset with infrared halotherapy red light sauna, hybrid sauna, sensory showers and a cold therapy room, and mental readiness with harmonic wellness loungers plus compression and percussive therapy, alongside robotic massage equipment and an Ammortal Chamber. When a chain this size treats recovery as core infrastructure, guest expectations shift everywhere, including at independent retreats.

Neil Jacobs Builds a New Luxury Group

Spa Business6 Sep 2026

The former Six Senses chief executive, who grew that brand from 8 to 27 properties across 13 years and spent 14 years at Four Seasons before it, is now CEO of a newly established hospitality management business for Constellation Hotels. It launches with The Connaught, The Berkeley and The Emory in London as its foundation, with a Saint-Germain hotel in Paris, Marrakech and the Hackwood Park estate in Hampshire to follow. "We're in the rare position of forming a new international collection," Jacobs said. A wellness-shaped sensibility arriving at the very top of the luxury market.

Heatherwick: City Design Is a Public Health Issue

Spa Business11 Sep 2026

Thomas Heatherwick will keynote the 20th Global Wellness Summit at Angsana Laguna Phuket from November 10 to 13, arguing that the built environment belongs squarely in the public health conversation and linking visually monotonous surroundings to raised stress, an extension of his decade-long Humanise campaign. He joins Dan Buettner, William Heinecke, Andrea Maier, Ronald Akili and Susan Magsamen under the theme "The Science, Art and Soul of Wellness." His studio is designing Hatai in Bangkok, opening late 2027 with a Six Senses hotel, wellness center and restored public space.

Kaipatiki Ora Opens on Iwi-Stewarded Hot Springs

Spa Business10 Sep 2026

An adults-only geothermal and contrast-therapy experience has opened at Kaipatiki Hot Springs in Parakai, northwest of Auckland: five natural cedar geothermal pools, three steam saunas, three ice plunges, private dry-changing, a fire pit and a landscaped native garden. It is owned by community stewards Te Poari o Kaipatiki ki Kaipara with local iwi Ngati Whatua o Kaipara, managed by Belgravia Leisure, and stocked with wellness retail from local and iwi suppliers. "These springs were places of recovery for wounded warriors," says board chair Mihi Blair. Cultural custodianship as the substance of the offer, not a veneer on it.

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