It was 2009 when I opened a blog on blog.de called EntSPAnnung (I know, incredibly original). At the third login I couldn’t remember the password. This would have never happened at Casino Suisse.Blog.de allegedly sent it to me several times in response to various requests. But it never arrived with me. Resetting it was not. Apparently it was not the time yet. I started to study Spa Management parallel to my work in the treatment room, but the idea stubbornly stuck in my head.
Because I did not have (I must say it retrospectively unfortunately so clearly) the balls to pull the number through and up on my own, welovespa.de was launched in summer 2012. At that time I was working for three different spas of the 5* hotel industry in Berlin and was in the middle of a long lasting fake self-employment drama with the German Pension Insurance.
Existentially it was pretty much the worst time to start a new project. At that time, we were working in pairs and under aliases – for fear of losing clients. An incredibly stupid move. And it came as it should have come. The thing hit the wall. Even today, years later, my stomach still turns a little bit when I think back and the fact that I am dealing with this for the first time today makes my hands sweaty.
However, there was never (really at any time, not even in the most intense phase of interpersonal dramas) even the slightest doubt about the idea of “Spa Blog”. So in the early summer of 2013 I worked almost around the clock on the relaunch, bought ilovespa.de and, together with my designer, created the blog design within a very short time that is still up to date today. I flew my ass off and from the day of the relaunch on I blogged completely transparent under my real name and showed my face for the first time.
Interestingly enough, my clients didn’t care at all. Nobody really took I LOVE SPA seriously. Even my parents kept asking me questions like “What’s the point?” or “What’s the point?” If I hadn’t been so determined and just kept on going stubbornly, one could have thought, based on the external feedback alone, that I had gotten completely lost in something. But little by little the really big yoga blogs were launched and suddenly there were people with whom I could exchange ideas. That helped a lot. But bloggers with my theme? Somehow they never existed. With this lifestyle mix of spa, fancy beauty and yoga content I was alone for a long time.
At some point I met Katja from the WellSpa Portal and Tanja from SPANESS. Although one could put both of them into the travel blogger drawer, there was a spa cut. And I am impressed to this day how we deal with each other. It is the opposite of competing rumgebitche. In 2015 we held a joint session on the Spa Blog at SpaCamp. In the meantime we have a common media kit!
But what has been happening in the vastness of the World Wide Web lately makes me very happy. Because I am discovering more and more Spa Blogs that are thematically very similar to I LOVE SPA. And even though the industry has been trying to convince me for several years now that they don’t have a budget for bloggers, there is a development emerging here that might indicate that at some point in the future I won’t have to mix cocktails in evening workshops with lifestyle bloggers during spa press trips!
Let us not delude ourselves
The industry is incredibly immobile and old-fashioned on the move and we can only dream of conditions like those in the fashion or beauty industry. But the more people keep running up against this wall and talking their mouths off, the better. And because readers of I LOVE SPA are most likely interested in blogs with similar content, today, after the probably longest intro ever, I’d like to introduce you to the ladies and blogs hiding behind the logos and portraits above!
Katja is not only a physiotherapist, but also brings along a training in cosmetics. Without a doubt the very best prerequisites for writing about spas as well. The WellSpa portal is all about wellness, beauty and travel. Katja is also the woman behind ISM cosmetics and therefore the perfect contact person for product development and signature treatments. Mountain tours, hardcore hiking, rafting or skydiving? No problem at all. I also bow to Katja’s social media skills.
Tanja’s roots, unlike those of Katja and me, are not in the treatment room but in the area of “Sales & Marketing”. On SPANESS she writes about wellness and active travel, but also cooperation management and blogger relations are her thing. You are looking for someone who not only writes about your spa, but also organizes a blogger trip for you? Then Tanja is exactly the right contact person.
Even though I have never met Anja from Talk Wellness live and got to know her personally, I suspect that she is as big a spa nerd as in my case. Anja lives in Austria and blogs in English. This may be due to the fact that she has been internationally active in the spa industry for more than 30 years now. During this time she has worked as a yoga teacher, spa manager, spa director, spa consultant and tutor of management courses, among other things, and this mix makes for a broad and extremely professional view of things.
Hannah also comes from the industry. She works as a specialist for bathing companies and as a sauna master in a swimming pool and is currently also studying Wellness & Spa Management. Spaholic is still very fresh and was only launched on June 3rd. Hannah herself calls Spaholic a “Wellness & Natural Lifestyle Blog”.
A paradise for skiers
Read more about Spas’ here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/travel/spas-italy-alps.html