What’s the point of going to a spa? Broadly, relaxation. What’s the least relaxing thing in the world? Children. That mutual exclusivity has always been a problem — you want a spa holiday, you also love your kids. But now you no longer have to choose between kids and relaxation. Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som in Qatar is the first Chiva-Som wellness resort outside Thailand, and fully half of it is devoted to families.
The segregation is complete. The adult side, called Serenity, is a jaw-droppingly excellent resort. Hugely grand and impressive, the main building has quadruple-height ceilings, a large, beautiful library with an in-house librarian and 4,000 books. There’s also a tea library with 40 teas, which can be used to create over 100 blends, and an apothecary specialising in Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine, or TAIM. At the heart of the spa there’s a huge Anish Kapoor sandstone sculpture that looks like an entirely smooth infinity drain or a giant’s innie belly button, striped with the strata of the rock. The spa itself is actually three spas in one — men’s, women’s and a set of private spa studios housed in separate buildings for the shy/famous. It’s best in class, with an encyclopaedic range of 150 treatments and 400 activities. This is how Chiva-Som has achieved mythic status among true spa afficionados — it’s very much not just a hotel with a couple of massage beds in the basement.
Throughout the whole resort, adults and kids’ sides alike, the architecture is monumental in scale, minimal in detail. There’s a grandeur combined with calmness. In the grown-up side you can’t hear a peep, it’s monastic in its rigour. Over in the family-friendly half, known as Discovery, there’s no sense that you must tell your kids to be on their best behaviour.
As much thought has gone into the children’s as the adults’ offering. It’s the only spa in the world that’s child-friendly. Not just child-agnostic or child-tolerant but actively child-embracing. But that doesn’t mean jam-smeared chaos and screaming. Not only are the range of treatments and activities impressive, but the passionate aim is to introduce children to wellbeing concepts at the earliest possible age. Presumably so that they don’t have to wait till they’re 55 (to pick an entirely random age) before they truly understand the link between mindfulness, meditation and not being driven nuts by anxiety.
My children are very normal, ants-in-their-pants nine-year-olds and yet they were about to lie serenely on enormous paddleboard-sized floats in the saltwater pool, listening to a guided meditation through headphones, basking in the warming sunshine for 40 minutes.
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Discovery is all about family connection. The many activities on offer (such as the Circle of Trust, the Mindfulness Game, stargazing, singing bowls and floating meditation) are engineered to engage parents with their offspring. This is not about just dropping them off at the (excellent, spotless without being sterile) kids’ club while you catch up on a little remote work. A digital detox is vigorously encouraged to get the grown-ups off their phones, and activities such as pottery, dodge ball, stunt kite flying and photography are so engaging that there’s no anaesthetising children with computer games here. There are even twin treatment rooms within the kids’ club so that you can have massages, reiki, manicures or pedicures side by side with your children. And if you have more than one child, the other can be playing ping pong, making slime or engaging in one of the 70 other activities just across the corridor.
Even on the Discovery side of Zulal there’s also an adult-only spa with male and female areas, although guests can mix if they like. There are steam rooms, saunas, plunge pools and outdoor pools, gyms with Technogym equipment. Treatments use 111 Skin, AMRA and Second Nature products. But no matter how swanky the facilities, a spa is only as good as its therapists. My massage with Sirida Longtong released tension in places I didn’t even know I had places, leaving me as loose-limbed as a baby on Valium.
As you’re in Qatar the resort is dry, but the food is delicious — all organic, and predominantly gluten and dairy-free. Which, since ice cream is an essential part of any childhood holiday, could have been disastrous. According to my son, though, the vegan ice cream (of which he ate a considerable amount) “tastes like it’s healthier, which is nice. Like vanilla-flavoured oats.”
On arrival at Zulal children check in by themselves in a special area with low seating, lots of children’s books and a whole blackboard wall where staff have already drawn an enormous welcome to each child by name. Kids fill out their own form — name, arrival date, departure — and add coloured fingerprints. It gives them a sense of independence, individuality and importance.
What more could you want of any holiday with your children?
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Details A five-night Kids on Us package at Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som (+974 4477 6500; zulal.com) starts from £4,020 per family, based on two adults and two children under 16 sharing two interconnecting rooms. Included are a family health and wellness consultation; three wellness cuisine meals daily; choice of one daily treatment per person; access to the wellness centre activities and facilities such as hydrothermal area, sauna, steam, outdoor pool and gymnasia; daily laundry service for three pieces of sports attire; plus treatments and activities from the selected retreat
