The Thermae Bath Spa is Britain’s only natural thermal spa, located in the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bath within the picturesque county of Somerset. Bath’s unique underground springs are the warmest geothermal springs found anywhere on the British Isles.

For anyone wanting to experience an authentic and unique spa complex, the ‘Thermae Bath Spa’ is the perfect way to enjoy the naturally occurring heated geothermal waters while you relax in one of the many treatment rooms. This is now become one of the city’s main attractions on offer to visitors, making Bath famous for its warm spring waters.

Although this is a unique building with its mix of Georgian and contemporary architecture, the city Bath was known for its spa waters long time before the Thermae Spa was built. As you would have to travel back in to time to 836 BC to Ancient Britain at the time of British king Bladud who is reputed to have first discovered the warm springs and warm mud around them.

Later during the occupation of ancient Britain by the Roman Empire, the city of Bath was given the Roman name of Aquae Sulis (meaning “the waters of Sulis”) and a Roman temple was constructed on the spot where the spa waters occurred. This temple became a Roman Bath house and was used by the Romans for rest and recuperation during military campaigns.

This led to the city of Bath to rise to prominence during the Roman period, which later saw the development of Bath as the country’s leading spa health resort during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Jump forward to the ‘present day’ and the city of Bath is renowned the world over the number one spa break destination in the United Kingdom. The Thermae Bath Spa is essentially a day spa where you can enjoy a range of spa treatments, bathe in the relaxing warm natural mineral-rich waters and if you want to indulge yourself you can choose from a wide range of spa treatments which have been designed to ease the body and soothe the mind.

Another unique feature of the modern Thermae Spa is the roof-top spa swimming pool. This is also utilizes the heated geothermal which are pump up to the pool, there also the addition of the pressured jets in certain areas of the pool, so you can enjoy a massage with the warm waters on your body.

You can also partake in one of the four specific aroma steam rooms that again utilize the warm spring waters, which have the addition of essential oils like eucalyptus or frankincense, which also leave you refreshed and relaxed.

The term spa hotels can be used to refer to two similar but different things. It may refer to a hotel which offers “spa” amenities. Or it may refer to a real total resort destination which centers itself around the idea of providing spa services.

We’ll look at both types of spa hotels throughout this article. Let’s start with the first kind (which is a lot cheaper). A hotel with a spa “attached”, so to speak, will not offer as much as a resort. Nevertheless, it will probably have massage services, mud baths, herbal wraps, and salt scrubs. It will at least have some of these services, if not all of them. All of this information should be available in any promotional material which the hotel has put out. Don’t think that this is a raw deal: you may just find that you have to pay for the individual services which you use. This is a great way to go when you don’t want to really go all out with a spa. Instead of “all you can eat” you are essentially getting “buffet” style selection. In the process the average visitor will end up saving a lot of money.

Now on the other end of the spectrum we have spa hotels that are full-on resort destinations. These offer literally all the amenities there are. They will also typically include all of these services in the price of staying there. So, once you pay you are in! Here you may even get natural hot mineral springs. (Many people don’t know what the original term spa referred to an actual town that had hot springs. Instead of calling it a town they called it a “spa”.) A spa hotel is obviously going to be more expensive than a normal hotel, and for good reason. The Bath Spa Hotel in England is a good example of this latter resort class. It is one of the finest hotels and resorts in all of the UK. It’s a restored 19th century mansion that everyone raves about.

All in all, the customer or visitor is really afforded a diverse amount of choices between these two descriptions. The pampering is something that we just don’t get enough of in this hustle bustle world. Thank God that some ingenious entrepreneurs have realized that humans still have a desire to get away every once in a while to a spa hotel!