Club wellness

People are swapping happy hour for hyperbaric chambers and picking up potential partners in the sauna. Private wellness clubs, writes Kathryn Madden, are the new third places- if you're lucky enough to get in the door

I’m lying in a poolside cabana sipping on a superfood smoothie spiked with bovine collagen, watching reflections of the gold-leaf ceiling dance on the water to a soothing soundscape devised by neuroscientists. I waft around the corner in an Alice Temperley robe and slippers and peer into the snow shower, where cascading ice flakes offer a civilised alternative to the traditional cold plunge, and then a steam room swathed in rose quartz. My instinct is to grab my phone and capture some content; it’s what we’re programmed to do in spaces of such uncommon beauty. But I resist the urge, partly because I don’t want to disturb the zen state brought on by my massage – during which I lay on a hot onyx bed in a room lit to enhance my circadian rhythm and was drizzled with honey like a baklava pastry – and mainly because a sign kindly asks guests to refrain from taking photos.

Surrenne, a private members health club in the swanky London suburb of Knightsbridge, describes itself as “a new era of ultra-luxury social wellbeing”. The club opened in April 2024 courtesy of the Maybourne Hotel Group (parent company of Claridge’s and The Connaught), and is free to access for guests staying at The Emory or The Berkeley – with a sly back passage for very important clientele. Everyone else can become a member for about $20,000 a year, plus a $10,000 joining fee, for which they will be welcomed by a team of professionals who’ll oversee every aspect of their health and wellbeing: healing massages, high-tech facials, holistic nutrition plans, bloodwork with medical director Dr Mark Mikhail, microbiome mapping, epigenetic testing and personalised supplements delivered daily.