CEBU, Philippines - We will not fully experience the beautiful world of exclusive pampering and some healing of the Batis Hotel and Balneo Resort itself until December 2013. But certainly we can find comfort and solace in the notion that it is well underway.
After its recent groundbreaking ceremony, the buzz its inception has generated has been fortified by its progress.
Who would not be excited by the prospect of having the National Artist for Visual Arts Benedicto Cabrera (BenCab to you and me), Cebu-based industrial designer Kenneth Cobonpue, architect Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa, fashion czar Jose “Pitoy” Moreno, landscape architect Ildefonso “IP” Santos, total designers Budji Layug and Royal Pineda, brass sculptor Michael Cacnio and ceramic potter Ugu Bigyan – nine of the country’s most highly-acclaimed global Filipinos in the field of art – collaboratively on a single project?
Intended to become the region’s foremost wellness institution, Batis Hotel and Balneo Resort is an allusion to the material it uses for healing – water. As a balmotheraphy development in Pansol, Laguna, it aims to be a Filipino landmark at the forefront of what visionaries call “a worldwide wellness revolution”. The Romans may have their famous baths and the Japanese take pride in their Onsen. But this time, the Philippines will have Batis, which takes to heart the promise of water as a healing power to man for centuries.
It revitalizes what “spa” literally stands for – not many know that “spa” is actually the Latin acronym for “sanus per aquam” or “health through water” – by taking water seriously.
So seriously, in fact, that it is employing the creative services of nine Filipino talents beyond compare, just to design the resort hotel in a fusion of art and wellness.
This distinctly once-in-a-generation development is envisioned to seize a projected notion of health tourism that is speculated to boom in full glory by the year 2030. However, the turnover of Batis in 2013 might possibly make this boom much, much earlier. And we are fortunate for being the destination that will be the future site of such a game-changing enterprise. (FREEMAN)