The goal: Macau is best known for the clamour of its casinos. I wanted to completely escape that frenetic environment, and to tackle fatigue following a long flight and a busy few days in Hong Kong.
The treatment: Indulgent and thorough, the spa’s signature Royal Banyan treatment takes care of guests from top to toe. Lasting 150 minutes, it commences with a foot wash and body scrub before a massage works to untangle knots, improve blood circulation and ease muscular tension.
How it went: Guests could easily, happily, lose a full morning or afternoon to the Royal Banyan treatment. After a foot bath, steam bath, skin scrub and additional shower, the body is massaged with a herbal pouch that is dipped in warm sesame oil. Feeling much like a hot stone massage, the heated oil and modified pressure acts to supposedly improve blood circulation and ease muscular tension. My therapist had an intuitive understanding of where to focus on and even clambered onto the massage table at certain points to fully apply pressure where needed.
Despite that, it’s a generally relaxing experience, enhanced by the spa setting itself. The resort’s treatment rooms are among the most impressive I have seen anywhere. Some are found in a subsidiary spa area on the hotel’s 31st floor but those on ground level – where my appointment was held – are most inviting. Staggeringly spacious and beautifully styled, they feature either a Japanese-style garden or verdant living wall bordering the oversized bath that serves as an enticing visual centrepiece. And it’s not just there for show either. Guests typically conclude their treatment with 30 minutes of “calm time”, during which they can soak in the tub while sipping on herbal tea.
After my massage ended, I was instructed to do the same and left to soak in a herbal bath where I could steel myself for return to the real world outside.
The therapist: From Thailand, my petite therapist Pew was exceptionally polite and impressively nimble, intuitively alternating pressure to deftly tackle points of tension and occasionally mounting the massage table to better unravel knots. Her ability reflects well on therapist ability at Banyan Tree spas generally: to ensure the brand offers consistent standards worldwide, staff must train at the Banyan Tree Spa Academy in Phuket before commencing their roles.
The place: In Cotai City, about 15 minutes from central Macau by car, Banyan Tree Macau offers an exceptional amount of space for an urban resort. All with striking “relaxation baths” in the main living area (which are fairly tepid and less inviting in practice than the stylish Japanese-style wooden tubs in the bathrooms), rooms are at least 100sq metres and might include Thai daybeds, private spas or, as with a number of spacious villas, their own pools.
Recreational facilities are good too, with a well-equipped rooftop pool and gym available – though visibility is limited during Macau’s frequent smoggy days – and two further pools, one with cabanas, outdoors. Primary dining options are the Thai restaurant Saffron or fine-dining venue Belon, which offers accomplished seafood but was almost entirely empty and devoid of atmosphere during our meal, despite the best efforts of our waiter and an exceptionally talented pianist-cum-singer to enliven the setting.
There are other shortcomings too. Although unfailingly polite, staff are unaccustomed to dealing with requests from foreign visitors – my partner and I seemed to be the only non-Chinese guests staying there – and at times struggled to understand even the most basic English-language queries. And despite Banyan Tree’s best efforts to create a cossetting atmosphere – subtly fragrancing rooms and corridors with a different incense or oil each day is among the nice touches – the resort is embedded into Galaxy Macau, a larger spread of resorts and casinos with significantly different aesthetics and environments. Walk a corridor from the hotel to an adjacent building and you can almost immediately find yourself in a vast shopping mall or windowless casino, or sidestepping a battalion of sequin-clad showgirls or a musical fountain.
Those sights might appeal to some, but I found the sudden change discordant and garish, and with the development set to expand further – a Ritz-Carlton opens next door in May – and a new Chinese financial centre being built across the border, directly across from the hotel, construction work in the broader area is still ongoing and visible from some rooms.
