TL;DR

I was recently a subject to being influenced online, and I don’t regret it
I booked a 48 hour trip to Sweden to visit a spa
The highlight of the spa was the 38 °C pool. It was heavenly
Experience a sense of luxury in a more budget friendly country
Granted the price depends on how strong the £ is compared to the krona

The title of this post is probably unsettling, because an aim of everyday is to not be easily influenced by people online. Especially since, the internet is a place riddled with small snapshots of people’s lives, and so that 90 second clip is not a 100 % match to that person’s reality, even though, they may try to convince you that it is. Believing that 90 second narrative, is the epitome of being easily influenced.

I was recently a subject to being influenced online, and I don’t regret it, because it was an influence I needed. So technically, this post is my attempt to influence you. If I don’t manage to influence you, let me know why by email. 😂

Does this image influence you, even a little?👀

The influential reality

Being an adult is a very tiresome reality. I don’t know how you handle each day, but I do it by reminding myself, that unless I do something about it, my life is not going to change for the better, for the remainder of my time here. There is nothing going to improve it without my input, but there are definitely things that can happen to make it a lot worse.

This grim reality motivates me to take initiative to bring variety and spontaneity into my life. I have my routines and habits, that keep me sane and grounded. But I can honestly admit, there isn’t a lot of pizzazz in my life. If I were to experience my final breaths right now, I would be grateful for the life I have led until now, but I would regret not taking the chance to do something out of the ordinary for me. This might be something you share with me or not. But it encouraged me to do something out of my comfort zone:

I booked a 48-hour trip to Sweden to visit a spa.

The influential rationale

This spa was in Gothenburg, a city within Sweden. It came across on my Instagram scrolling in a too good to be true trial reel, of a creator telling me why I need to book this spa experience.

The rationale was that, the spa was VERY cheap compared to spa’s in England that I have visited. The spa costs for a 3-hour session that I have experienced in the UK, has been around £80 per person. No food, sometimes a complimentary drink and definitely no hotel stay. This hotel in Sweden was £55 per person, and you got a 2-hour spa session, all day access to the outdoor pool, with bed and breakfast included. That’s insane right?

The creator went on to say they booked flights for £40 and did the spa in a day, without buying the overnight stay package. I hope you can see why I was influenced here, because “What do you mean it’s £55 for an overnight stay with a spa experience, in a different country, excluding flights?”

Now for my influential hard sell

Hopefully, you will know by now I am a chemist, and I am very good at critical thinking and analysing data. I did not trust this influencer who popped up on my page, because the post could’ve been a paid ad. So, what did I do? I went and googled the hotel for myself.

The hotel in question? Jacy’Z Hotel and Spa. The site currency was in Swedish krona, but when I looked at the prices for the bed and breakfast package with a spa visit, and then opened a tab to convert Krona to GBP, it was in fact £55 per night. Granted the hotel had different prices for various days. So, if I wanted to come on a weekend, some of them were up to 3 times the price of the cheaper rate. That’s fair, all hotels do that, depending on peak times.

However, as someone with a regular 9-5 timetable and minimal at home responsibilities, it was a no-brainer to book onto the next dates at £55 per night, which was fortunately mid-august (which isn’t typical for the summer holiday period in Europe). I also roped in a friend, because doing a solo trip to explore a city, is very different to doing a solo trip in a spa where you will be around a lot of people, most of the time. So, I was thrilled that I had a travel companion to enjoy people watching with.

So, through my own research, I looked at various packages and their prices, and picked the bed and breakfast with spa experience, as a great way to test out if that influencer I saw was legit. And as a true scientist, I hypothesised, and then sought evidence to either prove or disprove the hypothesis.

My influential evidence

I paid £70 per person for round trip flights from Manchester (Ryan air). The hotel was a 25-minute drive from Gothenburg airport. The airport literally was advertising the hotel we stayed at, which gave me high hopes that a) the hotel was real and legit and b) Sweden was proud of it and that it was good enough for the public advertisement.

We get there, and it is luxurious. Honestly, the vibe of that hotel felt like it was several tax brackets higher than me. The running joke during the trip was that the staff could literally smell the poor on us. We felt like we were getting the chance to experience how higher earners in the world live and experience spa vacations. It was a gorgeous hotel that was fancy, but not over the top and frilly.

The hotel had 3 restaurants inside, and we had breakfast and dinner from 2 of them. We didn’t experience the 3rd as it was closed at the times we were available to attend. The rooms were boujie for £55. Honestly, a Premier inn could not compare to that standard. The hotel had 27 floors, with the main spa being on the top floor, with infinity pools looking over the gorgeous views from that level.

The Spa

They had saunas but neither of us wanted to try them. They also had comfy resting beds, where we read, people watched and chatted, and a bar with drinks and snacks, and they also sold face and eye masks at reception. The highlight of the spa was the 38 °C pool. It was heavenly in there. The parts where you could sit and chill, the warmth on your skin, it was the perfect place to lose every single thought in your head and dissociate completely. I left Sweden feeling rested, which isn’t normal for when I go on holidays. I normally feel like I need a holiday to recover from my holiday, but this time, I felt like I gave my body and brain the chance to just exist with no care, thought or concern.

There was also an outdoor pool which is heated somewhat. On the day we tried it out, it was the coldest of the 3 days we were there, so the pool was warmer than the air, but it did not compare to the 38 °C indoor pool. It did also rain that day which didn’t help too much, but we appreciated that in the hotter days, that pool would be lovely.

The food

The food was a decent mixture. The restaurant for dinner was Asian tapas, but they also offered a Korean BBQ menu, which we chose not to try. My favourite was definitely the shrimp tempura, but I also tried their GOGO rice, which was delicious, and paired well with the tempura. They had 3 mocktails available to drink, and I only drank 1 on both nights, because it was fruity and tasted tropical. But when I go back, I will try the other 2 flavours. It was a passionfruit mocktail, with a whipped coconut cream foam top, and a sprinkle of salt. And when you drank all three parts together, they melted in your mouth in a sweet and salty balanced mix. It was lush.

The breakfast had an assortment of items from microgreens and pickled herring to a pancake station and freshly whipped cream and butter. They also had hot items like scrambled and boiled eggs, bacon, sausages and so vegetarian/vegan options such as fried vegetables and meatless chilli con carne. They had an iced coffee bucket, and hot coffee as well as barista made coffees at an extra cost.

Other amenities

The main purpose of the trip was the spa, but I did observe other amenities. The hotel had various games dotted around the ground floor. I have 0 idea what they were, one involved throwing beanbags into holes, and another letting metal disks slide across wood to a red line. There was a mini stage with a grand piano, ping pong tables, board games and pool tables.

BONUS

On our last day, we decide to book a twilight spa session (evening). The receptionist said it was quite full, but that they could squeeze the two of us in, and it was 125 krona for that remaining 2 hours. At that time, it translated to £9.57!! The way we basically fainted at that price, because UK spas could never compare to anywhere near that amount.

Are you influenced to try it?

Honestly it was a great 48 hours in Sweden, and we did go walk around the city of Gothenburg for a couple of hours in that time (as you do have to wait for your booked spa time to actually go to the indoor pools). And for the fact that it was £110 for the 2 nights, plus £70 for the flights, the experience you get there is amazing.

Granted the price depends on how strong the £ is compared to the krona at any given time. And with the turbulent state of the geopolitical status of the planet, it can be hit and miss. But for the opportunity to take a break and relax, and experience a sense of luxury in a more budget friendly country, Gothenburg Sweden is definitely top on my list. We are already planning to make a habit of coming back to the hotel, but also see if there are others where we can do short haul experiences of spas.

If you weren’t influenced to at least research this hotel yourself let me know why, here.

How to be influenced online