Sparkling Hill Resort & Wellness Hotel

A touch of Europe┬áSparkling Hill Resort & Wellness Hotel seeks to bring a true European wellness center experience to Western Canada. As Keith Regan learns, the spectacular setting is expected to draw visitors from around the world.  The mountains of British Columbia are a long way from the wellness resorts found in rural Austria, but in the vision of the developers of the Sparkling Hill Resort & Wellness Hotel, the two fit together perfectly.   When it opens in 2010, Sparkling Hill will seek to bring some of the European wellness center experience to North America, attracting visitors from around the world in the process. Sparkling Hill Resort was conceived some seven years ago when president and CEO Hans-Peter Mayr, a veteran of wellness centers in Europe, found the 174-acre site on a granite hilltop overlooking Lake Okanagan. The 240,000-square-foot resort and hotel building will be built into the side of the mountain, with a designÔÇöwhich is being kept under wrapsÔÇömeant to make the structure an extension of its surroundings. While many North American hotels and resorts have borrowed the phrase ÔÇ£European spa,ÔÇØ Sparkling Hill Resort will be the first true European-style wellness center on the continent, says Tim Spiegel, the projectÔÇÖs chief financial officer. The difference is the extent of the spa experience, he adds. ÔÇ£We are creating a wellness center based on a holistic approach to life that involves mind, body and spirit, and the treatments we provide will be geared toward that end.ÔÇØ For instance, Sparkling Hill Resort will have the first coldness chamber in North America, a treatment that involves a person entering a chamber where temperatures are taken to extremely cold levels for a few minutes. The treatment enables sufferers of arthritis and joint pain to be able to exercise more freely for several hours afterward.The resort will be unique in its offerings in other ways as well, with the area offering top-notch heli-skiing opportunities as well as the chance to play on a championship golf course. ÔÇ£It will be one of the few places in the world where you can literally go skiing in the morning and play golf on a course of this level in the afternoon,ÔÇØ Spiegel says.Sparkling Hill Resort is located just outside the city of Vernon, British Columbia and is equidistant from the two major cities in the regionÔÇöVancouver to the west and Calgary to the East. International visitors could also come through Kelowna International Airport and would then take a scenic, half-hour drive into the Okanagan Valley, past several scenic lakes and the golf course resort before heading up a newly created road to the mountaintop resort, says Sparkling HillÔÇÖs chief operating officer, Jim Radford. ÔÇ£People will have a true wilderness experience,ÔÇØ Radford adds. Deer, bear, bobcats and other wildlife populate the area and will be visible from all 152 rooms in the hotel, which is being designed to emphasize the outside environment rather than the ultra-luxurious accommodations, adds Spiegel. ÔÇ£Even though weÔÇÖve carved a place in the top of the mountain, weÔÇÖre essentially filling it with the hotel. So in the end, weÔÇÖre trying to disturb as little as possible and really put our visitors into the natural setting.ÔÇØ That setting is what convinced Austrian investors to back the $100 million project, adds Radford. ÔÇ£The view is of some of the most stunning mountains in Western Canada, and the lakes are just pristine.ÔÇØ Sparkling Hill Resort gets its name from the light reflected from the lake.The resort will have other environmentally friendly elements as well. For instance, it will use geothermal energy for heating and cooling, a choice that will provide long-term savings that can be passed on to visitors, Spiegel says. ÔÇ£We built our business plan based on the cost of fossil fuels,ÔÇØ he adds. Some 150 bore-holes, each 400 feet deep, have been drilled into the rock around and beneath the hotel. Radford says engineers discovered early on that the location was especially well suited to geothermal energy because the type of rock in the area is an excellent conductor of heat. In the summer, circulated water will be sent deep into the rock to be cooled, while in the winter, warmed water will be drawn into the resort to heat the facility. As of early 2009, construction crews at the site had excavated the two-story foundationÔÇöwhere underground parking will be locatedÔÇöfor the hotel, and the steel structure had begun to rise. Construction was delayed slightly by a sharp early cold snap in the area but remains generally on schedule, says Spiegel. Hans-Peter Mayr targeted Western Canada as the location for the first North American ventureÔÇöhe has helped set up and run several wellness centers in AustriaÔÇöbecause the area is favored by both European visitors and those from Asia. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖll be marketing worldwide when we get up and running,ÔÇØ says Radford. Vancouver, he notes, is the closest major city on the North American continent to Asia, and European visitors have long made treks to Western Canada to experience the natural beauty and rugged wilderness it offers. Meanwhile, the city of Vernon happens to be home to one of the few accredited massage therapy schools in British Columbia, notes Spiegel, helping to provide a pool of labor for the resort to draw from. ÔÇ£They will still need to be trained in our way of doing things, but they will have the basics, and we donÔÇÖt expect to have any trouble attracting quality people to help run the resort.ÔÇØMajor hotel chains have already approached the developers about purchasing Sparkling Hill Resort or converting it to fractional ownership or timeshare units. But Radford says the plan is for the developers to own and run the facility for the foreseeable future. ÔÇ£Once people in North America and visitors get to see the European experience in Canada, we think itÔÇÖs going to be a huge draw for years to come,ÔÇØ says Spiegel. ÔÇô Editorial research by Michael Fretwell┬á