However, the future of spas looks brighter, and has to do with the hotel operators who realised that a select hotel without a spa simply does not work very well anymore. ”In 2005 I was trapped on the financial market and seeking a place to escape to for a bit of relaxation,” says the owner of Eden Spa, Liliana Paraipan, who had tried the spa centres outside Romania and realised this market needed to be opened in Romania, as well.

In August 2005, Liliana Paraipan, at the time deputy general manager at the Romanian Commodity Exchange, decided to open her own spa, the first such centre in Romania, - after training in spa management and marketing in the US. In 2005, three months after the launch of the spa business, Paraipan left her position at the Commodity Exchange and started to work on educating the market: ”It was not easy for me to sell the spa therapy concept, because relaxation was directly associated with spending time in beauty parlours and body contouring.