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WELLNESS Bloomberg Pursuits March 2, 2020Special requests
are a special
nightmare
You’d think most people come to the ranch to
reset their bad habits, but it’s often the ranch
that needs to budge for picky clients. “I think
seven is the current record for the number of
times a guest has changed rooms during a
three-night stay,” says front-office manager
Samantha Zaepfel, who fields requests such
as adding blackout curtains and duct-taping
peepholes. She’s also been asked to unscrew
half the lightbulbs in a suite, to remove all
pens and paper, and to arrange a two-car
airport transfer for a single customer—one for
him and one for his luggage.
The list goes on. As the ranch has started
drawing tech bros in addition to its usual
crop of high-strung Fortune 500 execs and
sixtysomething ladies who lunch, Zaepfel and
her colleagues have gotten an equally diverse
array of odd requests. They’ve flipped a bed
so it didn’t face north for a feng shui fanatic,removed all the tables and chairs for someone
who “hated the look of flat surfaces,” replaced
the furnishings in a suite with a guest’s
shipped-in selections, and hung an extremely
expensive (and extremely giant) portrait over
a bed—it was one client’s apology to his wife
for bailing last-minute on their anniversary
trip. For visitors who desperately want to
be left alone, the staff has disconnected
doorbells, enabled sensors disguised as rocks
outside doors to let guests know when people
are approaching, and even installed food
warmers for frequent in-room dining.
Some requests end up as permanent
installations. The La-Z-Boy recliners and
big-screen TV near the hot tub in the men’s
locker room, for instance, are there thanks
to one regular who was adamant about
having a place to watch sports. One casita
has a special toilet installed higher off the
ground than a standard latrine for a repeat
visitor with very precise potty needs. All
of these tweaks are made at no extra cost.
Hard-core loyalists can even stow items in
their own complimentary on-site locker—
their personal tennis ball-feeding machine,
for example.O
verweight and underslept,
real estate executive Mel
Zuckerman ignored the stern
warnings from his physician:
The yo-yo dieting and long hours at the
office had to stop—his life depended
on it. Then, suddenly, his father died,
and he began to listen. It was the late
1970s, and fat camps were all the rage.
But after one too many military work-
outs and bland, calorie-conscious meals,
Zuckerman set out to develop a more sat-
isfying and sustainable recipe for healthy
living: Canyon Ranch.
Since its founding in 1979, the tony
retreat has espoused a whole-person
approach to care. The veritable pioneer
of what’s become a multitrillion-dollar
wellness industry, the Tucson resort has
never focused on isolated symptoms but
instead uses integrative medicine. And
it remains on the cutting edge, counting
the likes of Diana Ross, Tim Cook, and
Eva Longoria as devotees of its Ayurvedic
third-eye awakenings, crystal sound heal-
ing, and lucid dreaming “soul journeys.”
Zuckerman still swooshes on ellipti-
cals alongside them, and his age is a mys-
tery that guests love trying to crack—88?
95? 137? But these days he’s there for less
work and more play. In 2017, Zuckerman
sold his entire share of the company for
an undisclosed sum to Texas billionaire
John Goff, who’s continued Zuckerman’s
project of turning Canyon Ranch into a
global brand with satellite locations,
cruise and airline partnerships, and a
rapidly expanding real estate portfolio.
In November a Silicon Valley-adjacent
retreat opened to woo moneyed millen-
nials; this winter, for its 40th birthday,
the Arizona flagship is unveiling its own
$30 million tip-to-toe refresh.
Aging well, it seems, is easy for
Canyon Ranch and its founding father
(who’s 91, by the way). So when the leg-
endary spa offered me a chance to go
undercover as a staff member for a week,
I jumped at the opportunity to see how
the (fat-free) sausage was made. And it
wasn’t all downward dogging and green
juicing, either. From cataloging sex toys
to slicing single dumplings into half por-
tions, here’s everything I learned at
America’s original wellness retreat.