HOLISTIC: The new manager of Bliss spa, Burcu Tuğba Düzgüner , says the facility is all about delivering advanced skin and body treatments.
By Anand Holla
Think of spa and your mind gently sinks into soul-comforting words such as rejuvenate, refresh and revitalise. But, for Burcu Düzgüner, the sprightly new manager of Doha’s luxury spa Bliss at W Doha Hotel & Residencies, the idea of spa rejuvenated her entire perspective. It revitalised her life.
Sometime in 1995, Düzgüner felt like she had outgrown her bank job in Istanbul. “I was trying to escape my boring city life and was fighting with my inner emptiness,” she says, “I, then, came across an Indian yoga instructor who was travelling all around the world, and I felt inspired by him. That’s how my journey began. For a couple of years until I discovered Ayurveda, I kept travelling. I was out of my comfort zone. I was a different me. I found courage.”
Ever since, Düzgüner has travelled to more than 60 countries, discovering newer facets of a wholesome spa experience and attending the choicest of spa workshops and seminars to refine her knowledge of spa treatments. With 13 years of experience in spa management behind her, Düzgüner knows just how integral good old wellness is to our increasingly maddening modern lives.
“Sometimes life gets so crazy that we forget to nourish our minds and souls,” Düzgüner says. Clearly, that’s not a sales pitch; she can personally vouch for that realisation. Back when she was “searching” for herself, she found solace in the spiritual realm of holistic therapies.
“That’s when it starts to become your lifestyle. I began discovering popular spa retreats. From Aguas Calientes in Peru to the islands of Seychelles, from Tengchong Hot Spring spa in Yunnan, China, to hot springs by the Pacayo Volcano in Antigua Guatemala, I travelled to more than 60 countries and 90 spa hotels in my desire to discover more.”
While Düzgüner doesn’t believe in the healing properties of the hot springs, she sure loves their inherent spiritual atmosphere. “I believe that’s what comforts and cures us, mentally and emotionally. That is why hot springs around the world are my favourite destinations. They stand for the real meaning behind the word spa – an abbreviation of the Latin word Salus Per Aquam (SPA), which means healing with natural water.”
Indulging in a good spa experience is as much an exercise in self-pampering and catching a much-deserved break as it is in gaining several health benefits. Düzgüner finds one’s need to feel and connect to one’s inner self to be important. She says, “It is our hope that the connection we build with our mind, body, and soul, will guide us to a healthier and a happier life.”
Düzgüner’s new challenge now is to find new and improved ways to get Doha’s elite to connect with their inner selves. “The Bliss world has always been going through a dynamic continuous development. The Bliss spa, for instance, is all about delivering advanced skin and body treatments that get you real results. Behind those results is our accomplished team of hundreds of expert technicians from six continents. They use cutting-edge skincare technology to develop state-of-the-art services that make you, both look and feel, fabulous from head to toe,” Düzgüner says.
Founded in 1996 in New York, Bliss is often said to have renovated the modern spa experience by blending a list of top-notch services with a relaxed atmosphere. Doha’s Bliss spa, the first in the Middle East, opened in the spring of 2009. Sprawled across 8,000 sq ft at W Doha in West Bay, its modern chic design decked with Arabian-inspired elegance scores high on ambience. The spa features a retail beauty boutique, a luxe nail lounge with manicure and pedicure stations equipped with personal TVs, nine treatment rooms for men and women, and a VIP suite.
While it’s clear that Doha boasts of a vast clientele keen on having their skin scrubbed, smoothened and reinvigorated, Düzgüner says she can’t afford to stop reinventing the game. “As I spent almost all my training period in India and China, I always use natural herbal ingredients that are freshly blended to lend a unique and a wholesome spa experience. All ingredients are prepared daily to ensure the freshest natural treatments and offer the greatest benefits possible for both the body and the mind,” she points out.
The spa offers a wide range of its distinct body and beauty treatments such as Carrot and Sesame Body Buff-booking concierges, Hot Milk and Almond Pedicure and wake-up calls, Triple Oxygen Treatment and turndown service, and its nine relaxing treatment rooms come with hip touches, such as R&B tunes and the brownie buffet. “Bliss is known for providing the world’s best facials, massages, body treatments, waxing and nail services, and we now are working on the facelift technologies which will bring a new outlook to the market in Qatar very soon,” says Düzgüner.
Technologies aside, turning to traditional baths is crucial to keep things exciting in the spa business. It is well-known how ancient cultures, including the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, used spas for therapy and relaxation. Well aware of the many advantages of lounging in the natural hot springs, the Mohawk tribe in New York named their local hot spring “Sarasota,” which means a “place of miraculous water in rock.”
Being a Turk, Düzgüner values the wisdom on the complete bath experience steeped in the Turkish hammam, the Middle Eastern variant of a steam bath. While the first hammams cropped up in Arabia, and bath culture was a central part of Roman life, Turkey popularised the tradition by throwing hammams open to people of all statuses.
“I love the Turkish bath and the effect of Turkish scrubbing because the use of continuous hot water and the ambient temperature of 35-45 degrees centigrade stir up an environment of high humidity,” Düzgüner says, “This ambience raises the body temperature and activates all organs as if they are expending a great amount of energy. This change is very useful for the human body.”
Düzgüner continues, “Moreover, rubbing the body with the bath glove, after being put up in the high-humidity environment for a long time, accelerates skin renewal by removing the dead skin cells off the ectoderm. This process keeps the skin extremely fresh, something which you cannot achieve through other ways of scrubbing.”
So, that’s definitely a trick worth borrowing from the hammams then? “Of course, we are preparing to set up the same process in our steam showers at Bliss. I am sure our patrons will love it,” she says.