Six Senses Built a Longevity Clinic Before It Built a Lobby

Six Senses opened its first United Arab Emirates property on 1 September, on the West Crescent of Palm Jumeirah, and the proportions are unusual. The resort has 61 suites. The social and wellness club attached to it covers more than 60,000 square feet. That ratio – a wellness facility several times the footprint of the accommodation – is the clearest signal yet of where the luxury end of the hotel business thinks its money now is, and it is not in bedrooms.

What fills that space says as much. Alongside the spa and the massage circuit pool sit a longevity clinic, an IV lounge, a biohacking room and a squash court. Six Senses built its reputation on remote barefoot-luxury properties in Thailand, the Maldives and Oman where the selling point was isolation; a clinical wellness offer in the middle of Dubai is a different proposition entirely, aimed at residents and repeat regional visitors as much as at anyone flying in for a week. There are also 172 privately owned branded residences on the site.

The architecture comes from SAOTA, the Cape Town firm, and takes its cues from regional building traditions rendered in a contemporary idiom – which in practice means a lot of shade, screening and sightlines out across the Arabian Gulf toward the Dubai skyline. The property is targeting LEED certification, with water-efficient systems and waste reduction programmes, and an on-site Earth Lab running workshops on sustainable living, which is the piece of the Six Senses template that has travelled from the brand’s earliest resorts.

It is the brand’s fourth property in the Middle East and lands in a Dubai hotel market that has absorbed a remarkable amount of new luxury supply without visibly softening. The interesting test is whether a wellness-led property can hold rates in a city where the competing proposition is a beach, a pool and a very good breakfast. Palm Jumeirah’s West Crescent is the quieter side of the island, which for a resort built around sleep, recovery and clinical treatment is probably the point.

Sources: Hospitality Net, Time Out Dubai