The Brando, a luxury resort on an atoll once owned by actor Marlon Brando, officially opened in French Polynesia in July. It’s a breathtaking setting for the sustainable development and the Varua Polynesian Spa is a key ingredient for this slice of paradise (see p34). The holistic facility – with its tree top treatment rooms and Polynesian therapies – showcases the best of what Deep Nature, a French-based spa consultancy and operations firm, has to offer.

Since its launch 10 years ago, Deep Nature has secured management contracts for more than 40 high-end spas around the world for brands such as InterContinental, Sheraton and Clarins. Yet despite its sizeable portfolio (see p38), the company is still relatively unknown in the global hospitality and spa arena.

But this is about to change following the launch of Deep Nature Development, a new division of the company which will focus on consultancy and drumming up business to drive future growth.

Management potential
Frenchman Julien Patty, the president and founder of Deep Nature, married into the spa business in the early 2000s. An engineer by trade, his then wife was the daughter of Laurent Batteur – the chair of pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturer Groupe Batteur. As well as being behind the Algotherm spa brand, Batteur owned Thalasso Deauville in Normandy which is one of the biggest thalassotherapy centres in France.

“For three years, Laurent told me there was a business in spa management as he saw that Thalasso Deauville was not reaching its potential,” says Patty. “People in the hotel industry wanted to get rid of their spa because of they had so many staffing problems. There were already consultants, but none were operating spas. So I moved to Deauville and began managing the thalassotherapy centre and this was the start of Deep Nature.”

It was a steep learning curve, admits Patty. He had to restructure the business and figure out how to successfully operate a spa with 33 treatment rooms without any accommodation. But he had the support of Batteur “a great entrepreneur” who still has a 25 per cent share in the business.

Impressed with his work, InterContinental enlisted Patty’s help in opening and running the I-spa in its Paris hotel. “From there I had many contacts and one of the first spas I created from scratch was [InterContinental] Bora Bora,” says Patty. “I travelled the world looking for business and gradually I had one spa, then two, four and now 40 operations!”

Timely meeting
It was when Deep Nature won the contract to operate a flagship spa for Clarins in Paris in 2011 that Patty first came into contact with Ghislain Waeyaert. Waeyaert, a well-known figure in the global spa industry, was the international boutique and spa director for Clarins. Over his five-year tenure, he respositioned Clarins in the luxury spa sector and grew the spa division’s turnover from €45m (US$60.6m, £35.5m) to €75m (US$101m, £59.2m). Before that he had a similar role at Comfort Zone and, in total, he’s worked in the cosmetics sector for more than 20 years. It proved a timely meeting for both of them.

Patty says: “I’d had some success in France, a bit of Europe and also in French Polynesia. I knew our model could work and I saw that Ghislain had the potential [as well as the contacts] to develop international business.”

Waeyaert says: “Clarins is a great company, but I’ve been an employee for the last 20 years helping other brands to develop their own business. With Deep Nature I had the opportunity to set up a partnership with someone I trust.”

More importantly, the pair get along well. Talking to both of them together, the ease of conversation is clear and there’s playful banter as they joke about what their respective roles and goals are in their new joint investment company Deep Nature Development.

Deep Nature Development launched in March as a division of the contract management business. Its complementary services focus on the set up of a spa – from feasibility and business planning along with spa concept, design and pre-opening services. While it doesn’t have a fixed Deep Nature Spa concept, it does have a standard set of operating procedures and branded marketing collateral in place that can be adapted to suit facilities and some owners simply choose to run with this and keep the name. Patty says: “We tailor-make the spas because they’re never the same size or in the same location.” Notably, Deep Nature categorises its spas by location type – whether they’re in the mountains or sea-based sites to those in the nature (forests) and the city.

To this end, it’s not restricting itself to working with just one product house. Because of its connection to Groupe Batteur, many spas have agreements with Algotherm, but other brands it works with include Clarins, Cinq Mondes and a number of others. Waeyaert says: “We offer several [skincare] partnerships and advise the spa on what cosmetic line is best for them, depending on if it’s a destination or urban spa or where they want to position themselves in the luxury scale.”

Negotiating contracts
While the consultancy side of Deep Nature is still in its infancy, the growth in its spa management contracts has accelerated over the last 10 years and Patty puts this down to running spas that make money. “The profitability of our spas is between 5 and 25 per cent which is very good in Europe or French Polynesia where staff costs are high,” he says. “After paying the owner a fee, we are even able to earn 5 to 10 per cent ourselves. We also aim to deliver a return on investment within three years and often the first year – when the opening is new and there’s a lot of interest – is the best.” Patty says these numbers apply to all Deep Nature models, from the one treatment room facilities that it runs for luxury residence group Pierre & Vacances to Thalasso Deauville.

Part of the success for Deep Nature, he says, is down to negotiating the right contract with the owner. “We have to anticipate the business plan perfectly and set our fee based on that,” says Patty, explaining that sometimes owners want them to pay something that’s not viable. “Luckily the fee I’ve suggested has always been respected,” he adds.

The company offers two contract models. If it’s a straightforward management agreement, the deal is set for five to seven years. But if Deep Nature invests in the spa concept and contributes to décor and fit out, the partnership will be arranged for 12 to 18 years.

With 300 employees on its books, having the right systems and selecting the right workforce is also fundamental. Patty says: “We have set methods of management, accounting and reporting, so I think it’s that and having a brand people like that makes it successful.

“It’s a bit weak to say people need to be ‘spa managers’, they have to be entrepreneurs as well. It has to be their own business and you have to involve them in terms of salary, bonuses and so on. My long-term goal is to give them the opportunity to become partners of the business but it will take time to organise this.”

EMEA focus
Waeyaert, who takes up the role of managing director at Deep Nature Development, says that given the background of the company, he’s confident about the future. “They’re one of the only ones to be running profitable spas in Europe,” he says. “If we expand this business model in other parts of the world, we will be successful.”

Aside from The Brando, Deep Nature has just taken over management of the Spa My Blend by Clarins at the Majestic Barrière hotel in Cannes. And Patty talks about four other new openings – a Cinq Monde day spa in one of the tallest towers in Belgium and three spas in New Caledonia in the South Pacific. “The government there wants to boost leisure and tourism and has looked at what we’ve done in French Polynesia,” says Patty.

For Waeyaert, the biggest areas of interest are in other parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) where companies offering contract management services are limited and where spa development is also booming. “We’ve come in at the right time,” says Waeyaert, “because hotel owners and investors want to have profitable spas and no longer want to lose money. And we can prove that this is possible. The intention is to use my know-how and my network to develop Deep Nature internationally by winning new contracts.”

While Patty is mindful about not growing too fast, he anticipates things will move quickly now. “We don’t want to grow industrially – it’s a human business and we need to find the right people [to partner with],” he says. “But on the other hand, we now have Ghislain and we want to export our model. And things can happen fast in this business – at the beginning of the year we took over thee spas we weren’t expecting and one we had to take over in two weeks.”

Waeyaert concludes: “We want to offer an amazing experience to guests and run a profitable spa for the owner. Although we’ll be prioritising some regions, my goal is to put a Deep Nature flag in every country… and I’m ready to take Deep Nature to the next step of that development.”