Comparing Contrast Therapy Business Models for Your Hotel Spa

Two huge trends within the hotel spa world are thermal bathing and contrast therapy (hot plus cold). Both portend tremendous business value, driving in acting as a draw for a property’s wellness footprint for more, and higher paying, guests or the potential to sell day passes. These facilities are also expensive to build with high opex. Rather than chase trends, you have to figure out the business model first.

To offer some points of comparison, one of your two professionals here (Adam), lives in downtown Toronto in a neighborhood where he’s within three blocks from two prominent players in this space – Othership and AIRE Ancient Baths.

Othership touts itself as an immersive sauna and ice bath social club, signaling the benefits of stress reduction and relationship building through a combination of contrast therapy, aromatherapy and music. It’s also a solid, sober alternative to traditional nightlife. The original location is in said neighborhood in downtown Toronto, but its popularity has propelled it to New York and likely many other cities.

Contrasting this, AIRE Ancient Baths offers a luxurious, candlelit and silent spa experience. Inspired by ancient Roman and Greek traditions, it offers a thermal circuit, plus specialized massages, rituals, and a famous private wine bath experience.

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On the surface, AIRE and Othership occupy the same wellness category, but in practice they represent two fundamentally different operating models. What we have to think about critically, though, is not just how they are different but where the market will be in 5-10 years when both models have attained some degree of market saturation.

Start with Othership. This is ‘social wellness’ incarnate – productized and suitable to scale. The footprint is compact and efficient: a reception and lounge anchored by a herbal tea station, one big theater-style sauna, multiple ice baths and shared showers. The design prioritizes throughput. You can move a high volume of guests through a relatively small space without compromising the experience.

The programming at Othership offers an easy onramp to newcomers and veterans aliek. Guided breathwork sessions, high-energy Aufguss performances with towel choreography and even sober social nights with DJs and live musicians turn the venue into something closer to a wellness club than a spa. At roughly $55 per session as a base with memberships and bundles available, the barrier to entry is low. That matters. It encourages trial, and more importantly, habit formation.

Now contrast that with AIRE. The moment you step inside, you know this is not about energy or community but introspection. The space is significantly larger, with multiple thermal pools – tepidarium, caldarium, frigidarium, flotarium – alongside a steam room, salt scrub station, and treatment rooms. The design leans heavily into Roman, Greek and Turkish influences, with low lighting and strict expectations around silence.

The experience at AIRE is intentionally unhurried. Guests move between pools at their own pace, settling into a rhythm that emphasizes stillness and sensory immersion. This is not a place you visit casually or frequently. It’s a destination for couples, for special occasions, for moments where time is carved out deliberately. At around $175 per person as a base and before treatments, the pricing reinforces that positioning.

So, who wins?

In the near term, Othership has the advantage. It’s stickier. The lower price point makes it accessible. The social component drives repeat visitation. The programming creates variability, which keeps the experience fresh. From a unit economics standpoint smaller footprints, lower build costs and higher guest density mean faster returns and easier replication across multiple neighborhoods within the same city.

AIRE, however, has a stronger long-term ‘defensible moat’. Large-scale thermal facilities are expensive and complex to build. The architectural detail, the spatial requirements and the operational constraints create natural barriers to entry. On top of that, the brand has carved out a distinct identity. It’s not just another spa; it’s a specific type of urban thermal experience that’s difficult to replicate without significant capital and design expertise.

Looking ahead five years, our prediction is that Othership, and other concepts like it, will expand aggressively across North America and likely into other urban markets. The relatively low cost to develop a 4,000 to 6,000 square foot contrast facility means we’ll see a wave of copycats, though.

Sauna and cold plunge circuits will become ubiquitous like they already are in Europe and parts of Asia. What feels novel today will quickly become standard. With each new copycat is another consumer who says, “Nah, we did Othership last month; let’s try that new place this time.”

Further, Othership isn’t just competing against other social-focused contrast therapy centers; it’s competing against the slew of infrared sauna booth providers and other home installation manufacturers who are building these types of units directly into people’s houses as wellness or biohacking amenities. The best hope Othership has is to lean into its social wellness fundamentals while also exploring ‘recovery club’ upgrades.

AIRE, by contrast, will grow more selectively. One location per major city is a reasonable assumption. The model doesn’t lend itself to rapid scaling, nor should it. Its value lies in scarcity and differentiation. As the market becomes saturated with contrast concepts, the uniqueness of a fully realized thermal journey becomes more pronounced.

This leads to an important conclusion for hotel developers and operators: contrast wellness is rapidly becoming table stakes. If you’re building a new spa or repositioning an existing one, you likely need some form of sauna and cold exposure. Guests now expect it. But you cannot rely on these elements alone to drive demand over the next five years.

The implication is that wellness concepts need to evolve beyond this first-generation of contrast therapy craze. That could mean deeper programming, more advanced recovery modalities, tighter integration with sleep and longevity science or entirely new experiential formats that haven’t yet reached mainstream adoption.

Othership shows how to drive frequency and community. AIRE Ancient Baths demonstrates how to create occasion-based demand and defensibility, albeit with more capex required. The real opportunity lies in understanding both, and then building what comes next.