Daily Pampering: Mandarin Oriental Miami offers private beach experience

by McLean Robbins on

Life’s a beach at the Mandarin Oriental Miami. Their new Oasis Beach Club combines South Beach‘s already spectacular white sand beaches with a private cabana offering. Whether you’re looking for fun in the sun relaxation for the whole family, spa serenity or a total techie retreat, there’s a package just for you.

Available by rent for the whole or half-day ($150 and up), the cabanas include a personal beach butler, welcome oshibori towels, Evian bottled water and exotic fruit platter. Cabanas are stocked with amenities including a flat-screen TV, mini refrigerator, sunblock, iPad and Powermat electric charger usable on most electronic devices.

We’d suggest you upgrade to the Spa Serenity package ($600), which adds on two 50-minute aromatherapy massages, green iced tea, a spa lunch bento box for two and cool mist sevices throughout the day.

We just have one more question – where are our peeled grapes?

Get more luxury travel ideas from daily pampering.

Daily Pampering: Organic resort spa opens in Malaysia

by Melanie Nayer on

The Chateau Spa and Wellness Resort, the world’s first organic wellness destination spa resort, will open on April 28, 2011 in a 150-million-year-old tropical rainforest in the Berjaya Hills, Malaysia.

Modeled after an 18th century medieval ‘Haut Koesnigburg’ castle in Alsace, France, The Chateau has 210 rooms and suites. The Chateau offers three, five, and seven night packages that are specially designed for guests and include accommodation in The Chateau’s spa rooms, daily meals created by their very own dietician, and complete daily fitness and wellness programs.

The five star deluxe spa resort is the first to offer the use of illusive European thermal facilities, which include a herbal infused sauna chamber, salt grotto or mud chamber, and a soap brush/aquaveda heated bed with automatic body scrub facilities. Each guest meets with a member of the spa personnel to create personalized therapies and programs that are designed to meet individual needs and health goals. Use the therapies to work on pampering, beauty, anti-stress, body cleansing, fitness, weight loss, and more.The spa’s unique products are created from The Chateau’s very own ecologically grown gardens. The Chateau also has an array of fitness and wellness activities to experience, including mountain biking, horse riding, trekking, yoga, dance classes, bowling, as well as an 18 hole award winning golf course.

Why wouldn’t you indulge in this pampering? The Chateau Spa & Organic Wellness Resort is a 45 minute drive from the Kuala Lumpur city center and a 90 minute drive from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Daily Pampering: Woodstock Inn & Resort $888 spa packages

by Melanie Nayer on

You can call it a case of crazy 8s, or you can just accept that sometimes Vermont does things a little out of the ordinary, but always well received.

Now through April 28, 2011, The Spa at The Woodstock Inn & Resort will spoil guests with its “Pampered & Great Spa Escape,” offering accommodations for two nights and $888 in spa credit, all for $888. The Vermont luxury spa, which opened in September, is offering this indulgent package for Sunday-Wednesday arrivals in a standard guestroom and $888 of spa credit per room, per stay, based on double occupancy

Housed in a 10,000 square-foot LEED-designed structure, the $10 million new Woodstock Inn spa provides a nature-inspired ambiance and is a celebration of the seasons, which carries through to the full spa menu. Each season, a different signature treatment will take center stage among the extensive selection of year-round spa offerings. For the winter, guests will experience the 100-minute Signature Deep Forest treatment which begins with an exfoliating body scrub and hydrating wrap and ends with a full-body massage. The outdoor meditation courtyard has a sauna, hot soaking pool and a Japanese Lilac meditation tree that marks the passing of seasons. Even on the chilliest days, feet will stay toasty with radiant heating and the warmth from the outdoor fire pit.

What better way to spend the holidays? This daily pampering can be yours for $888 for two nights.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Daily Pampering: Celebrate the holidays on the shores of Lake Geneva

by Melanie Nayer on

The holidays can be a stressful time. To ease the stress La Réserve Genève is offering a special menu of spa treatments for the holiday season from December 1-January 15. And after a day at the spa, celebrate with Christmas Eve dinner or the New Year’s Eve fete, which turns into a DJ-fueled dance party at midnight.

For the spa aficionado, La Réserve Genève is offering the 4-day “Quite an Agenda” package:

The intensive personalized program spa program on the shores of Lake Geneva is based on a preliminary evaluation of your acid-base, stress level, and concentration, as well as an osteopathic analysis and a breathing and cardiac test. Its goal is to combine nutrition, massage, treatments, and sports activity to cleanse the body, and to adopt new life habits so you head home in top shape.

This includes:

-4 hydromassage baths
-2 personalized body wraps
-1 body exfoliation
-1 skin scrub
-2 La Réserve “Better Aging” body massages (80 minutes)
-2 La Réserve “Better Aging” body massages (1 hour and 50 minutes)
-3 personal training sessions
-1 complete slimming/sculpting treatment (80 minutes)
-Daily sports activities (yoga, do in, stretching, Pilates, aquagym)
-Full board with 3 meals per day at Café Lauren (excluding beverages)
-Access to spa facilities

The cost of de-stressing after the holidays? $3230 per person

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Win a surf vacation to Byron Bay, Australia

by Kraig Becker on

Have you ever wanted to visit Australia? How about learn to surf? If you said yes to either one, or both, of those questions, then we’ve got just the contest for you. Tourism New South Wales is sponsoring a contest in which one lucky winner, and their guest, will be whisked off to Australia for five days of fun and sun on the lovely beaches of Byron Bay. Once there, they’ll learn how to surf and go kayaking with dolphins, while enjoying the famous Aussie hospitality.

To enter the contest, simply click here and fill out the form, which includes a short survey with a couple of travel related questions. From there, you’ll sit back and wait for the contest to end on November 30th. If you’re picked as the winner, you’ll get round trip airfare from Los Angeles to Brisbane courtesy of V Australia, five nights stay at the luxurious Byron at Byron Resort, surfing lessons from Mojo Surf, and much more.

But if you’re not lucky enough to win the contest, you may just want to take a trip to Byron Bay anyway. After all, it is one of the best beach destinations around. To plan and book your own Australian adventure, check out Springboard Vacations where you’ll find a host of options for visiting Oz. For example, their Ultimate Spa Package includes 10 days of pampering at some of the best resorts down under, while their Learn to Surf Package gives you everything you need for a six day aquatic adventure, including two free surf lessons and a bike tour of Sydney.

Between the sweepstakes and these great package deals, you don’t have any excuse to not visit Byron Bay soon.