The Genius Loci enters the Concept SPA.
At the roots of the Wellness Holiday.
INTERVIEW to Cinzia Galletto
Journalist and Spa Concept Communication Designer.
On our journey to discover the professionals in the “SPA & Wellness” industry, we meet Cinzia Galletto, journalist and communication consultant specialising in the spa and wellness tourism sector, as well as friend and collaborator of Studio Apostoli.
SA – Cinzia, you have been working within the industry for over 20 years, but where exactly did your experience begin?
CG – My research for several years now has two main directions: on the one hand the awareness that one can learn to “perceive” a place and rediscover its soul; on the other that knowledge passes through the filter of sensations and that therefore the senses can be our “masters” of life if we place ourselves in the right dimension of deep listening.
It was an ancient Indian saying that I “accidentally” listened to many years ago that opened the doors of this fascinating journey. The saying quoted:
“ONE KNOWS THROUGH THE SENSES, ONE GROWS THROUGH THE HEART”.
From a professional point of view, Slovenia was the land that baptised me. For more than 14 years I have been working with some of its most important spa groups such as Lifeclass, Terme Krka, Rogaska, Lasko, and making known the rich offer in terms of tourism and wellbeing of the nation, an experience that brought me an official award from the Tourist Board in 2011 for being “a sure source of new ideas and approaches to communication and sales for the spa companies you follow, causing a significant positive impact on the tourist image of the whole Slovenia”.
This experience culminated in 2017 with the writing of a guide book “Slovenia – Spa Destination – Heart of Water in Europe” www.turismodelbenessere/libri.it
SA – What are the needs to satisfy today in order to have a communication that is effective and leads to tangible results?
CG – Until a few years ago, it was enough to capture consumers’ attention with coated advertising pages and impressive images to sell your products, but today this is no longer sufficient. It is no longer enough to have a quality product or brand for it to be successful; you need to make yourself known through other means.
It is necessary to have strategies and narrative techniques to highlight the strengths and details that make a destination unique.
In particular, it is necessary to know how to communicate effectively the stories that give value to the Hotel and/or Spa product, able to differentiate itself from the competition by seeking the uniqueness of its destination and offer.
From a first step dedicated to consultancy for the identification of a concept, we then move on to a communication strategy that culminates in a coordinated press office activity.
SA – What do you do for a wellness destination in terms of communication and how do you define yourself?
CG – One day, thinking about how my spa consultancy had changed over time, I looked for a definition that was exhaustive of the different activities. Talking only about press office, public relations or communication was incomplete and reductive, so I came up with the definition Spa Concept & Communication Designer: a role that identifies those who “design”, creates a communication strategy starting from the identification of a philosophy, “concept”, for a strong identification of the spa.
My consultancy can start from the beginning, that is when you want to create a spa, or take over later, that is when the spa needs to be rethought, to have a new brand that makes it recognizable on the market and a new soul to communicate (Brand Identity).
In both cases, in this first phase, my role is to identify a Concept suitable for the area and environemment in which the spa is located and the target audience. The first goal is to make a destination recognizable.
In an increasingly complex and competitive world, it is essential to find a distinctive feature, a concept, a unique and distinctive philosophy. In this subtle action of rethinking or creating a Brand, “Naming” is of fundamental importance, that is the action of giving a name to the spa, to the packages, to the treatments and to
everything that should, already in the simple name, evoke and direct the end user towards the new concept.
NAMING THINGS IS AN ACT OF CREATION
Since ancient times the power of words and the strength of the name have been known. “In the beginning was the verb…” quotes the Gospel of John, while the ancient Latin phrase Nomen Omen already attributed to the name the power to enclose a person’s destiny.
Without disturbing profound philosophical and esoteric concepts dedicated to the action of “naming things”, it is evident that the evocative power of words and the possibility of “playing” with them brings to mind different semantic areas of belonging. Naming” is therefore a very important phase during the creative process of identifying a concept and an integral part of the success of a communication.
SA – What are the risks if a correct communication is not made ?
CG – Wrong target or a semantic area of reference can create a generalized and dispersive communication. Even using too much content can be a mistake, it is better to focus all communication on one or two central messages to become incisive in the market.
Another mistake one can make is to emphasize one’s own offer and risk confusing the end user and thus weakening the feed back action or even making it negative. It is also possible to communicate in a wrong way and not suitable to the offer in this case you can create expectations that are inevitably disappointed by the end user generating a response on the web and social networks that can be very negative and dangerous for a “brand reputation”.
SA – What is meant by Genius loci and what role does it play in a spa consultancy?
CG – Genius Loci is a Latin phrase that identifies “the soul of a place” as its essence. The importance of the territory is fundamental especially when talking about places chosen for wellness or for a relaxing holiday.
The ancient Chinese geomantic art of Feng Shui teaches how to organise space and define it according to arcane symbologies linked to concepts of energy and elements. In fact, it is precisely the energy of the place around us that can influence
our psychophysical state and help us to reach states of deep relaxation and psychophysical balance.
Man has always sought places and spaces that help him to find himself.
Every traditional culture from north to south in the east as well as in the west recognises to particular places the power to ferry our souls to continents of peace and inner harmony. Man has always sought springs, spring water, caves, sacred woods or fairy gardens in which restore body and spirit. Just think of the rivers of India, and the Celtic forests, or the caves of the Neolithic period and even in the Middle Ages, the monastery gardens that were of fundamental importance for the well-being of the monks and for the care of the sick.
SA – How do you get in touch with a place?
CG – Through listening and perceptions. Perceiving the essence of a place and in this case of a place where a resort, a hotel or a spa is hosted means being able to read the deep “atmospheres” that the destination can give, it means being silent to understand the message that nature in that particular place wants to give us, but above all knowing how to read and interpret the symbolism of its geographical and territorial aspects, also drawing on the most ancient traditions and knowledge such as Feng Shui but not only.
Knowing how to read and interpret the symbology of geographical and territorial aspects of a place and empathise with it.
In a certain sense we have to enter into a sort of empathy with the place, to create an exchange of information between us and it. The well-known economist Jaques Attali also speaks of empathy, reminding us that it is precisely this value that will make the difference in the coming years: “To win the new challenge will be the “ontologically more empathic” sectors: the health sector, of course, but also all the activities related to healthy eating, cultural growth, enrichment of skills, care of the environment. We will probably stop compulsively buying useless things and aim at a better use of personal time”.
If we transfer these concepts to the wellness and tourism market, a trend emerges that sees successful the choices made in terms of holidays to learn new healthy lifestyles, stays in contact with nature and its preservation, holidays that discover the value not of an “empty” time (from the etymology of the word) but of a moment to dedicate to oneself to return home enriched with a knowledge, an understanding and an experience that changes one’s way of being and one’s rhythm of life.
Transformational tourism, therefore, understood as the search for an experience to live intensely and experience new versions of oneself outside of an obvious and repetitive routine.
Cinzia Galletto at Forum Piscine in Bologna with Alberto Apostoli, Amy Keller and Igor Chinellato
SA – So what is the future for spas?
CG – To get closer to the future of the spa and wellness market, we need to look at the moment we are living in. Surely not an easy moment, indeed perhaps one of the most difficult ones that recent generations have had to face.
Everyone can see the strong acceleration we are experiencing. Time never seems to be enough, our lives are crushed by “cobras”, urgent events, work and family commitments and various worries.
Our society imposes an acceleration on us and our lives are increasingly subjected to a sort of centrifuge of time and space. This extreme acceleration burns meetings and relationships, everything becomes “disposable” from objects to interpersonal relationships. Things are used and thrown away, relationships are lived and burned with ever shorter and shorter times. In this impermanence of life, fixed points are lost, everything that takes root deep inside us.
In a sort of perennial anxiety, sometimes without really knowing why we are agitated spasmodically and without almost realizing it, we find ourselves in labyrinths of conflicting emotions, with no way out and only when we manage to stop then we realize that we have completely lost our balance. When we stop we can draw on a new awareness and in part the recent experience of lockdown has
made us experience, albeit in a coercive way, this new dimension of contact with ourselves that has been highlighted even more by the subtraction of “contact” with others.
SA – How does this state of mind work in the wellness sector ?
Stopping even just for the space of a holiday can mean a lot: having time to get inside yourself and discover the best part of yourself. But if the objective is to find within oneself the absolute centre of being, the narcissism of which, more or less, is an unconscious victim, it deceives us and leads us to look only in our image for the only certainty capable of giving us the illusion of eternity.
And if everything around us changes and is modified following an exponential acceleration, at least our appearance must give us the illusion of immortality to be able to find a “permanent centre of gravity” as an old famous song by Franco Battiato used to say.
SA – One of the books you wrote talks about “perceptive tourism” what do you mean?
“For the ancients the “Otium” represented a certain philosophy of life inspired by the advantages that a period of “non-employment” can give. Only when one spends time doing nothing, the mind becomes free to wander and discover its inner spaces.
So if the tourism of the new era, on the one hand, rediscovers the value of a path of knowledge of the places of the world which aims to get closer to one’s own interiority, on the other hand it re-evaluates the “holiday – wellness” understood as a time – space to dedicate to one’s own person, trying to stop thinking and concentrate on the sensations and emotions that our body can give us”.
This is a passage taken from my first book written back in 2000 “Alle Porte del viaggio – Manuale di Turismo Percettivo”. This theme linked to a way of travelling
and to a tourism made up of perceptions was then resumed in other publications of mine and represents the fil rouge of my personal research that has been accompanying me for many years now.
SA – What does it mean for you Well-Being today?
CG – Well being, for me, should not mean “well having” or “well appearing” concepts with which you are often confused, but getting closer to your own essence. Every “wellness therapy” communicates through the senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight) but reaches the essence of our self.
Everything we can experience through our body and our skin, if we draw on a different awareness, can become a way of knowing reality and in a mirror-like relationship even ourselves and our deepest self. In this concept resides the high value that Spas have for me, a focal point for our civilization today.
In this historical period that leads us to distance but makes us perceive that in reality we are all connected, that makes us sick but somehow highlights that it is mother earth who suffers, we need spaces and places where we can find our inner voice and the commonality with nature: today this dimension can be perceived (also) during a Spa holiday.
Cinzia Galletto is a journalist and communication consultant specialising in the spa and wellness tourism sector. For over 20 years she has been working alongside the best spas on the national and international territory, identifying the concepts with the greatest impact and the most effective communication strategies to make a unique and recognisable destination. Author of several books on travel and wellness semiotics, thanks to her distinctive approach she has been able to adapt the symbolic language to the most innovative communication strategies.
Her definition of “Perceptual Tourism” is the rediscovery of the “genius loci” in tourism, an essential step to identify the concept, the soul of a SPA. Lecturer, speaker and moderator at conferences dedicated to the wellness sector, Cinzia Galletto offers a constantly updated vision of the world of communication and media relations. She defines Spa Concept & Communication Designer because communication must originate from the essence of the spa by identifying a “concept” linked to the project and the environment and develop into a strong and unique “brand identity”.