A spa town on our doorstep

To develop your town, it pays to think big and that is just what Callosa de Segura is doing. A survey was conducted in the La Monsin district of the town which found a supply of underground water at 33.8 degrees with a flow rate of over 50 litres per second. That set them off thinking.

The City of Callosa de Segura has now  published a feasibility study for a project that could turn the town into one of the major tourist centres of the region. They plan to construct a hot spring resort and hotel accommodation on a plot in the neighbourhood of La Monsin with a budget of 12 million Euros provided by a private company in exchange the right to operate the facility for a specified period of time.

The plan is to build a  resort housing a spa with sauna, hydrotherapy cabins, two restaurants, a room for conferences and a hotel with a capacity for 160 guests. Specifically, the project involves the construction of a building with three storeys of which one would be a basement.

The basement would hold the underground spa facilities, including a reception area, a medical office, solarium, outdoor swimming areas, saunas, hydro massage cabins and hydrotherapy, as well as a gym with a locker room area. The ground floor would house a library, a TV room, a cafeteria, two restaurants and a multipurpose room that could accommodate congresses and exhibitions. The first floor would be reserved for hotel facilities, with a total of eighty bedrooms.

Just to remind you,  the total cost for this project is an estimated 12 million Euros.

What Callosa needs is a company brave enough to gamble that sort of outlay on the success of this type of venture. Five or more years ago there might have been competing tenders for the project but now I am not so sure. It very much relies upon people having the money to spend on this type of leisure activity. Like the planned aparthotel in Bigastro which actually failed because it didn’t have regional approval, a spa resort to compete with nearby Fortuna is a step into the unknown. However, you only make big money by taking risks so who knows, we may have a spa town on our doorstep in the future.