During this year’s annual Washington Spa Alliance Symposium, on 17 March at the National Press Club, pioneers of the modern US spa industry – including Deborah Szekely and Clodagh – have been honoured with a Spa Hall of Fame.

The inaugural ‘Class of 2015’ includes founders and distinguished contributors who have been recognised for lifetime achievement.

The Spa Hall of Fame, which will live as a virtual museum here, will feature photos and bios of inductees, as well as an archive of timelines and history as a way to publicly recognise a select group of leaders whose contributions have advanced the modern spa experience.

The list of the first inductees is as follows:

• Deborah Szekely, 1940, Rancho La Puerta (co-founder); 1958, The Golden Door (founder)

• Sheila Cluff, 1977, The Oaks at Ojai (owner and founder)

• Jerrold Cohen, 1979, Canyon Ranch (co-founder)

• Pat and Juanita Corbett, 1982, The Hills Health Ranch (co-founders)

• Professor Mary Huddleston Tabacchi, 1984, First University Course on Spa, Cornell University

• Clodagh, 1984, Clodagh Design (founder)

• Ruth Stricker, 1985, The Marsh, A Center for Balance and Fitness (founder)

• Bernard Burt, 1989, historian & author, Fodor’s Health & Fitness Vacations; 1991, ISPA (co-founder)

“This induction ceremony will represent the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together centred around spa – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson took the waters alone in Warm Springs, Virginia in 1818,” said the museum’s curator, Mary-Elizabeth Gifford (referencing President Kennedy’s oft-quoted welcome to Nobel Prize winners who were hailed as unmatched in the White House since Jefferson dined there alone).