With most of Bahrain's businesses witnessing a decline in profits in the past three months during unrest, the spa and massage industry in the Kingdom saw some upturn in business, said the manager of a top salon in Manama.

"Fortunately, we haven't been negatively affected by the recent unrest," said Cathy Chetty, Sparadise Spa and Salon manager.

"On the contrary, business has been booming. We have even had to turn people away some days due to full bookings," she added.
 
Despite the recent atmosphere of unrest and tension, people have found some respite and relief in losing themselves to the luxury of a much-needed massage or spa therapy, she added.

Some salons said that there had even been an increase in business, adding that they had sometimes even needed to turn away customers due to being fully booked.

"People have realised that they need to relax and unwind more these days and so a lot of them have started coming in for a massage or some spa therapy, obviously to relieve their stress and relax,” Chetty said.

"Sparadise has even become a second home to many of them. We understand that demand is a lot more now and hence we have even decided on an expansion of the place to meet this increasing demand."

Most salons and spas also noticed that people these days were definitely a lot more stressed out than usual, mostly owing to the situation.

"Business at my salon was quite down during the height of unrest, but fortunately we managed to stay open, thanks to our loyal regular customers," said Nahla Salon owner Nahla Al Majid. "Things are now slowly going back to normal and business is picking up quite well.

"The recent situation has really affected people and we've noticed that our customers are way more stressed out nowadays. As a result, we're getting a lot of demand for massages - both head and body - and other kinds of stress relieving and relaxing treatments. The Moroccan bath is a particular favourite with a lot of my customers."

Some salons said that though they had been affected a little for a few days during the peak of unrest, business went on as usual for the most part of the period, while others attributed their regular inflow of business to the fact that they were located far from the main problematic areas.

Certain spas closed down for a very short period despite the high demand from customers, due to staff being unable to make it to work because of problems in their areas.

Few salons and spas, however, said that business had earlier gone down as a result of unrest. – TradeArabia News Service