WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTS: "SPAS GO BACK TO THE WELL"

Flowing Water photo"Luxury-seekers pay top dollar for warm baths, cold showers, reports Candace Jackson of the Wall Street Journal. "The move toward water...comes as the saturated spa industry looks for new ways to continue expanding."

Here's a look at some of the more innovative hydrotherapy programs featured in the WSJ article:

Trilogy Spa in Manhattan Beach, Calif., spa-goers can buy a $45 day pass that includes a 'waterfall shower with Plumeria that showers guests with 20 gallons of water a minute.

Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Cornelia Day Resort offers a Watsu pool hand-filled with salinated Evian water. (The Watsu pool at Cornelia includes a $10,000 sanitation system and is serviced by a pool technician at a cost of $2,000 a month.)

And at the new water-themed spa at the Standard Hotel, Miami, an Andre Balazs Property, "the traditional Turkish hamam -- communal steam rooms, soak tubs and cedar-lined saunas -- meets modern touches like flat-screen televisions."

The spa at the Hotel Vitale in San Francisco, a Joie De Vivre's creation, offers a $60 soak in one of the rooftop tubs. The baths are usually sold as an add-on to a massage.

Skin Deep—The Body Spa, a successful Huntington Beach, California day spa, is adding a 1,500-square-foot 'water experience,' which includes a self-service scrub bar, coed bathing area and soak tubs.

The Lodge at Woodloch, a destination spa that will open this Maay in Hawley, Pa., features a large 'aquagarden' of soaking pools and hydromassage waterfalls.

Deborah Woods, the owner of Skin Deep, told the WSJ that water treatments can attract first-timers who are nervous about complicated seaweed wraps or potentially painful exfoliation sessions. 'There are many people who have emotional issues about being touched by someone they don't know,' says day spa that is Water is not scary."

The treatments also can be revenue boosters: Offering 'do-it-yourself' showers and tubs that people can hang around in for hours also opens the possibility of selling monthly memberships or day passes. 'I think water treatments create a feeling that fits with what people's expectation of what a spa ought to be,' says Ginny Lopis, co-owner of the Lodge at Woodloch.