Continuing with the event’s theme of ‘Back to the Future,’ two industry icons were honoured onstage at the Global Wellness Summit in Kitzbuhel, Austria yesterday.

Balthasar Hauser, owner of Biohotel Stanglwirt in Austria received an award for Leader in Sustainability for his hotel in Tyrol, which is built around an organic farm and includes such unique features as a tennis court with a grass roof that sheep graze on.

Richard Schmitz, CEO of H/S/M Hotel und Spa Management in Germany, received an award for Leader in Innovation. Schmitz was the first to add ‘and Spa’ to a resort’s title, back in 1983, when he changed the name of Brenners Park Hotel in Baden Baden, Germany, to Brenners Park Hotel & Spa – forever changing the face of the spa industry.

Today, said Schmitz, 50 to 60 per cent of the guests at Brenners Park come to the hotel because of the spa.

“Spa is something very special,” he said. “Spa is a way of life.”

Hauser told the audience of his story of inheriting the family hotel business when he was just 17, and slowing growing it from a small local business to the 5-star resort it is today – starting with building out an on-site barn using leftover materials from neighbours’ construction projects.

Along the way, Hauser – who had wanted to be a farmer – always included an element of nature in his design plans, even developing special children’s areas so that visiting youngsters could have a taste of his idyllic childhood growing up in the Austrian Alps.

“To a farmer, nature is something holy,” he said. “We have an organic farm with an integrated luxury hotel – not the other way around.”