Balneotherapy

A Spa holiday or Balneotherapy includes a spa treatment, which is to say with spring or fresh water and a spa hotel for your comfortable accommodation. Spa means Sanitas per Aqua and the International Spa Association (ISPA) defines it as places "devoted to enhancing overall happiness by a variety of professional services that encourage the renewal of mind, body and spirit”.

It is called balneotherapy as well as spa, it is a care of hydrotherapy that does not use sea water, unlike thalassotherapy. Most of the time balneotherapy centers or spa are located in the mountains and far from the sea in the Alps, the Pyrenees, in the forests or near the cities. An urban balneotherapy was born by considering the recent and current keen interest for natural medicines. Spa and balneotherapy centers appear in the cities to alleviate the pains of working people. Between beauty parlours and health centers, these new urban spas are very fashionable.

Most of the spas and balneotherapy centers have similar spa packages:

v Medically overseen balneotherapy and spas stays: back pains, beauty, stop-smoking, sleep, postnatal, lose weight, healthy legs.

v Special products offered to discover spa and balneotherapy features: short stays and spa break with some good care allowing you to discover the balneotherapy benefits on a few days, spa and golf packages, spa weekend, health spa break and also an introduction to balneotherapy.

v Jet shower and undersea shower, affusion shower, bubbling baths, alga wrap and muck wrap, aquatic gym, hammam or even steam bath are called humid spa care and are provided in every spa.

v Special care to assist you losing weight and slimming, in specific treatments and massages for anti-cellulite treatments are one of the care you could have in a spa. Most of the time linked to dietetic diets on full board in many spas and balneotherapy centers, slimming cures have verified their efficiency.

v Aesthetic care joint with thalassotherapy treatment for your body and face. You would find all these treatments in every spa holiday or spa weekend in France or in few other countries. But their quality might vary from one spa to another. Do not falter to ask our advice or to read one of the Internet users’ opinions and their grading of the resort on our website.

Most of the time their view is really pertinent. Balneotherapy is a natural medicine since its calming effect combined with the staffs of the spa and they take care of you and make it possible to feel deep relaxation. This quiet atmosphere in spas helps some people restoring some drugs (soporific, analgesic or anti-inflammatory medicine) with benefits of sea and water treatments. Balneotherapy is performing as ancient as thalassotherapy with curative properties even if it is not as familiar as thalassotherapy.

Everybody knows the Roman public baths that enabled to maintain some hygiene in big cities of the Empire. Each Emperor had their own baths built to enjoy the benefits of the balneotherapy. Today the balneotherapy has grown thanks to modern techniques and offers its bubbling baths or jet sprays but its soothing effect remained the same and if not more efficient than in the past. When we talk about the spa rather than balneotherapy it refers to a more luxurious concept about stays in the luxury spa hotels in France, Tunisia, Thailand, Morocco, Bahamas and Caribbean or in other heavens on the earth situated all over the world and enjoyed by privileged few.