Starwood Hotels announced that they have sold their Bliss Spa division to Steiner Leisure Limited for $100 million, giving Bliss a short-lived run under the ownership of Starwood Hotels.

It's interesting to note that Starwood purchased the brand in Jan 2004 with the intention of growing it along with their W Hotels brand – but in the time since then, only a few new Bliss spas have opened, and they've only opened over the past two years or so.

Under Starwood's ownership Bliss did create the "Remede Spa" line – a high end line of spa products, and a high end spa that are found in some St Regis Hotels, but oddly enough earlier this year Starwood announced a new brand "Necter" created along with a "spa branding and management company". It begged the question – why not use your in-house spa brand to create and market a new product as they did with Remede?

Once I heard that, I had a feeling something was up for the Bliss brand in Starwood's portfolio. Bliss was never really integrated into Starwood – almost like a red-headed stepchild – because it always had its own management team and was run as a separate division, separate even from W Hotels which was intended to be it's "parent".

About a year ago I wrote a story about the possibility that Starwood was beginning to increase the promotion of their Bliss Spa brand by including the logo in corporate materials, but that increased promotion never seemed to get beyond corporate documents – nothing seemed to be added to the Starwood Hotels site, and there were never any cross marketing campaigns except on WHotels.com

Fortunately for those Bliss lovers, the Bliss & Remede brands will stay exclusive to W Hotels & St Regis hotels exclusively (and probably aloft too), but whats interesting is how the brand will just become another commodity within Steiner Leisure.

Steiner Leisure is one of those companies that a lot of people have had an experience with – but dont even realize it. For example, Steiner operates the spas on 16 cruise lines, encompasing over 125 cruise ships, owns the Elemis line (found in local spas around the country) and operates many many resort spas around the world.

The divestiture of Bliss was a great move for Starwood, especially since it never made complete sense for Starwood to purchase the brand to start with. Starwood can now focus on the hospitality industry more and leave the associated businesses to companies that focus on that particular business – such as how Gerber Bars operates most of the bars at the W Hotels.

The purchase of Bliss by Steiner will give them a high-profile brand, the ability to expand the brand by opening  shops and spas in stand-alone retail locations unaffiliated with hotels (something Starwood never seemed eager to do).

My only question is what will happen to the Bliss office/staff since they now share an office with Starwood's Luxury Brand Group.

andrew@alconic-inc.com

Andrew Calvo is a 26 year old Commercial Real Estate Advisor in New Jersey. I live in Tinton Falls, NJ. This blog is about my passions - primarily hotels, commercial real estate, and development, etc.

Since I have been in High School I乫ve had numerous jobs, but the field which has always interested me is Real Estate, Hotel Development and Construction. I consider myself a zealot in that area - I try to absorb as much as I possibly can, take the experiences that I learn, or read about and use them in my life. 

www.passionsofazealot.com