The Season to Relax

By Kate Betts

Need some quick pampering to get through the holiday season with your sanity intact? Two cutting-edge spas are offering new services geared to clients who don't want the hassle of having to book months in advance--and in one case, there are even free products in the mix.

This month Bliss Spa celebrates its partnership with the W Hotel chain with a new location, bliss49, in New York City's W Hotel at 49th Street and Lexington Avenue (three more spas will open in 2005 in W Hotels in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago). The New York spa, which features a manicure-pedicure lounge, a shaving station, and women's and men's locker rooms with saunas and aromatherapy-infused steam rooms, will also offer unique treatments like Bliss's Carrot & Sesame Body Buff and Triple Oxygen facial. But the biggest bonus is that hotel guests will get priority booking, which means they won't have to endure the spa's famously long waiting time--over two months--for a reservation.

Fresh, the Boston-based bath-and-body brand, has opened Espace, an in-store spa that encourages clients who come in for treatment to try new products. "These individual appointments allow us to have a better understanding of our clients' needs," says Lev Glazman, who, along with his wife Alina Roytberg, founded the Fresh brand in 1991 with a line of all-natural soaps that the couple sold out of a Boston storefront. These days Fresh includes skin-care, body-care and makeup lines. Glazman calls Fresh's latest service, which is available in New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the "try-and-buy" approach to marketing: book yourself for any one of five face treatments and three body treatments (from $75 to $185), and get a free in-store shopping spree for the equivalent amount of the service. Now that is bliss.