Alberto Apostoli of the eponymous international architecture company revealed the secret of how to create a profitable spa to attendees of the Forum Hotel & Spa in Paris today (28 May).

The secret, he says, is integrated design.

Integrated design is defined by Apostoli as controlling the whole process of spa design from beginning to end – with all the players, including engineers, investors, architects and interior designers working together to create perfection.

"It is also not possible to split the separate stages of the project if you want perfection," said Apostoli.

In terms of the stages of a spa project, Apostoli is referring to the six pre-planning processes a development must go through before ground is broken. The stages identified by Apostoli are as follows: first, the feasibility study, the concept, the preliminary design, the definitive design, the detailed design and site supervision.

Apostoli punctuated his speech with examples of strictly-supervised spa projects that have reached a level of 'perfection', including The Four Seasons Moscow spa and a private residential 6,000sq m (64,583sq ft) spa project in Astana.

At the project in Astana, Apostoli noted that the feasibility stage took up 10 per cent of the time during the integrated design process. The same percentage of time was spent on the concept stage and the preliminary design phase. 20 per cent of time was spent on the definitive design and 25 per cent was used to complete both the detailed design and the site supervision phases.