Akasha
Hotel Café Royal's award-winning Piccadilly spa featuring London's first Watsu pool, a Carrara marble hammam, an 18-metre pool, and nine treatment rooms.
Hotel Café Royal occupies a building on Regent Street with the kind of heritage that most London hotels can only reference. Akasha, the hotel’s spa, occupies a lower level of that building and treats the opportunity with corresponding seriousness.
The facilities are comprehensive: an 18-metre pool, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, and nine treatment rooms form the backbone of the programme. What distinguishes Akasha from the broader London hotel spa market is the specificity of its offerings. The private hammam, clad in Carrara marble, provides the full Turkish bath ritual in a setting that makes the aesthetic case as strongly as the therapeutic one. The Vichy shower complements it with a hydrotherapy protocol adapted to the individual.
The Watsu pool is the headline feature: London’s first, and still the most considered. Zen Shiatsu massage techniques delivered in warm water, the body guided through stretches, gentle manipulation, and wave-like movements, address chronic tension in a way that conventional dry massage does not. It is a genuinely different class of experience.
Therapists use Valmont and Aromatherapy Associates products throughout, placing the treatment quality in a tier that matches the setting. The lounge bar serves nourishing dishes before or after treatments.
Named London’s Best Hotel Spa 2025 by Time Out, Akasha earns that designation not through spectacle but through the quality of what actually happens in the water.
