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Absolute achievement: 10 spas in 10 years. Vancouver, BC’s Absolute Spa homegrown chain of wellness meccas hits benchmark.

These are movie-star quality palaces of pampering, but you don’t have to be a VIP to get A-list treatment.

by Julie Ovenell-Carter 4 June 2009

It wasn’t British Columbia’s first spa—the high-service, low-frills Hills Health Ranch in BC’s Cariboo country nailed that honour in 1985. But when Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia’s first Absolute Spa opened in the Century Plaza hotel in downtown Vancouver in 1997, it was definitely the first real spaaaaaaaaaah: the movie-star kind, with luxe treatments, lush robes and quiet attendants offering cucumber-flavoured water and herbal tea. The real achievement of the place, though, was that you didn’t actually have to be Gwyneth Paltrow or Ben Affleck (to name just two of the spa’s Hollywood clients) to be treated like a VIP.
It was a simple recipe for long-term success, and while other high-end spas have come and gone in Vancouver, this one just keeps adding new properties—nine in the past 10 years with an 11th coming soon. Today you can have your travel kinks massaged away at one of the spa’s four YVR (Vancouver) airport locations or celebrate a good run at the tables with a hydrotherapy treatment at the River Rock Casino. And now you can make a convenient pit stop en route to Whistler and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to have your nails done at the newest spot—the Absolute Spa at Park Royal on Vancouver’s North Shore. Just tell yourself you’re going for the gold—nail polish, that is…
www.hellobc.com

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We welcome you to use these story ideas as inspiration for your own stories about Canada. The CTC owns all rights worldwide. (Our images are also royalty-free and available for editorial print, broadcast and electronic use.) If you choose to reproduce these texts for editorial use only, please include the author's byline and "courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission." If you cut, edit or modify the text in any way, please include this note: "The text has been modified from the original." Thank you.

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