A Spa Lover’s Sweet Dream

At the chocolate factory, cocoa beans are soaked, sprayed, warmed, pummeled, turned into a silky goo and wrapped in silver foil.

A mile away at the chocolate spa, clients are soaked, sprayed, warmed, pummeled, turned into a silky goo and wrapped in silver foil.

Somewhere, Milton S. Hershey is smiling.

Hershey, the man who made millions from America’s sweet tooth, may be best known for his candy bars, but it was more than innovative chocolateering skills that made him an icon. He was a master marketer. After all, it isn’t a town called Nestle that sees 5 million tourists a year.

Nearly 100 years after Hershey began mass-producing milk chocolate, the hotel he built is following its founder’s formula: If you’ve got a niche, exploit it. So when the Hotel Hershey opened a spa two months ago, it was no surprise the gimmick was chocolate: chocolate wraps, chocolate baths, chocolate lotion and chocolate scrubs.

Dubbed the Chocolate Spa, the $7-million, 17,000-square-foot addition to the already grand hotel opened Jan. 15 to a flurry of media attention.

My companion, John Muncie, and I arrived on a dreary winter day with the sky so heavy it seemed to be held up by the twin brick smokestacks of the Hershey factory. But a weighty sky in this town can be a good thing. Clouds trap the roasting cocoa aromas; open your car windows, and it smells as if you’re swimming inside a Hershey’s bar. For locals, the enticing scent may mean bad weather.

“In the morning if you can smell the chocolate, you know it’s going to be nasty,” said Craig Deimler, 28, who lives in nearby Harrisburg. Deimler, fresh from his first facial, was wrapped in a white robe, eating chocolate-covered strawberries and sipping hot chocolate. His wife, Melissa, decided to celebrate her 29th birthday at the Hershey Spa and made her husband come along.

Not that going to the spa was a hardship-except, perhaps, financially. Milton Hershey may have developed inexpensive milk chocolate, but his hotel’s spa isn’t cheap. John and I would end up dropping close to $1,000 in less than 24 hours.

Such luxury has humble roots. About 130 years ago, a 14-year-old Mennonite boy failed as a printer’s apprentice and was sent to Lancaster, Pa., to learn to be a confectioner. Milton Hershey learned his lessons well and went on to develop the world’s biggest chocolate factory and an entire town to service it.

Along the way, his company added a theme park with roller coasters and other rides, a museum showcasing Hershey’s personal collection of artifacts on Native American and Pennsylvania German life, a school for the underprivileged, a sports stadium, a lodge, gardens and the hotel.

Why add a spa? It’s all in the numbers. According to the International Spa Assn., 95 million people went to U.S. spas in 2000, generating $5 billion in revenue. Spa industry revenues surged 152% between 1997 and 1999.

Completed in 1933, the 235-room Hotel Hershey overlooks this little town (population 12,000) with avenues named Chocolate and Cocoa and street lights shaped like Hershey’s Kisses. For many visitors, the hotel and its sister attractions-the gardens, theme park, factory and now the spa-make the town a destination in itself. For others, especially Southern Californians with similar attractions closer to home, Hershey is an easy side trip or place to overnight after a day antiquing in Amish Country, about 30 minutes away, or a visit to Philadelphia, about 75 miles to the east.

The resort-built in a Mediterranean style that looks charmingly foreign-would please even non-chocoholics. Hershey based his design on European hotels he visited while vacationing with his wife, Catharine “Kitty” Hershey. A flight up from the reception area is the hotel’s centerpiece: an open, two-story-high Spanish-style patio decorated with intricate tile work, carved wood beams, a fountain and a cloud-painted ceiling.

Opposite the patio is Hershey’s other pride and joy: the Circular Dining Room, where dinner for two runs into the triple digits. Service is attentive, and the food is as good as any posh, big-city restaurant (don’t miss the mushroom soup). The only nod to Milton is butter that carries a tinge of chocolate flavor.

Windows trimmed with ornate Victorian-style stained glass wrap around three-quarters of the space, which overlooks a formal garden. As big as it is, the room has no support pillars, so every guest gets an unimpeded view of fancy gazebos, manicured hedges and pools outside.

At night, a single white taper flickers on each table; branches drape elegantly from potted trees. Gentlemen must wear jackets, and all the ladies I saw wore dresses. There’s a Gatsby-visits-Barcelona feel to the place.

We arrived before the 4 p.m. check-in and killed time at the fitness center, so new it still smelled of paint. It’s brightened by picture windows overlooking the gardens and miles of southeastern Pennsylvania hills beyond. (The facility offers an assortment of exercise classes at $10 a pop, which seems exorbitant given the prices spa goers are already paying.) Across the hall is a Mediterranean courtyard housing the 30-by-50-foot swimming pool and a whirlpool.

John and I scheduled our spa treatments before dinner and the following morning. The quality varies, but the routine stays the same: A host or hostess shows you to dressing rooms decorated with beautiful tile work, boldly flowered carpet, upholstered stools and Victorian-style lights. Pick up a waffle-weave robe and bubbled-gel plastic sandals, and store your clothes in a deep cherry locker with an electronic lock. (Some spa goers choose to wear their swimsuits; other go naked or use tiny, barely there paper bikinis provided by the spa.)

When you’re ready, a staff member escorts you to the upstairs Quiet Room, where a formal sideboard is stocked with thermoses of coffee, hot water for tea and, of course, hot chocolate. At the appointed time a specialist leads the way to a treatment room.

Each step of the process is infused with serenity. The wood-paneled Quiet Room is decorated in muted forest tones and has soft leather chairs and a flickering gas fireplace. The treatment rooms are tiled in soothing greens and blues. Employees speak in whispers. A green fountain trickles pleasantly in the stairwell near the marble-floored Inhalation Room, where mesh patio chairs sit amid the scent of lavender or other herbs loaded into the “aromatic diffuser.”

It’s not a bad way to wait for the treatments.

First up for me was the Whipped Cocoa Bath-the usual dip in a whirlpool, with one exception: What swirled around me was hot chocolate, of sorts. Before I stepped into the tub, Tina Chiffo, a “soak therapist,” dumped in a scoop of dried milk powder, another scoop of a “specially formulated Whipped Cocoa Bath” (‘Gives you awesome bubbles,” Chiffo said) and a scoop of cocoa powder. The cocoa, according to Chiffo, was supposed to invigorate me, while the milk powder softened my skin. That was the theory, at least.

She hit the whirlpool button, and jets whipped the concoction into a mountain range of froth. Bathing in hot chocolate seemed over the top, even for a chocoholic like me. At least the solution was diluted, so the only evidence of chocolate was the brownish bath water under the foam and a vague scent of cocoa.

While I soaked, John steeped in a whirlpool tub with a mixture of rose essence and salts encased in a big mesh ball. His soak therapist, Jeff Barrile, wasn’t sure what the essence was supposed to do but thought the smell may have a psychological effect. “Roses are calming,” he said, pointing to a vase of fabric roses.

Barrile was more enthusiastic about the Rain Shower treatment, which he said has a “tonifying effect.” It turned out to be more satisfying than the whirlpool bath on several accounts. An intricate tile mosaic of blue, green and gold waves swirls around the feet and body as 16 side nozzles and an overhead spray shoot needles of warm water. Best of all, while the spray softens you up, the therapist hoses your feet, hands and sides with a water stream that chases away sore spots. This must be what my Ford Explorer feels like when it goes through a car wash.

I’d already warned the staff that I was a cold-water wimp, so no “tonifying” blast of chilly water for me. John, however, took the treatment as prescribed.

Standing outside his shower stall next to a set of dials and pipes, Barrile manipulated the water temperature, starting off at 95 to 100, then cooling it down to 80 at the end. The temperature change, according to Barrile, is part of the toning process.

Next came the Cocoa Butter Scrub, when massage therapist Jill Morgan rubbed a warm, grayish paste onto my skin. It smelled like chocolate but felt like gritty butter, which it is. The paste, Morgan said, is made from cocoa butter and crushed cocoa shells designed to exfoliate and soften the skin.

Once I was completely greased, she hosed me down with a contraption that looked like something from a medieval torture chamber. Called a Vichy shower, it’s an overhead water pipe with seven shower heads. She toweled me dry and rubbed my already smooth skin with cocoa butter lotion. By the time I headed back to the Quiet Room, I smelled like a Hershey’s bar.

What can I say about the Meadow Flowers Herbal Wrap? How about this: Skip it. This $90 service (which includes an automatic 20% tip), according to the spa’s instruction manual for therapists, is supposed to “soothe, increase perspiration, detoxify and increase blood pressure” by wrapping the client in hot sheets of linen soaked in an herbal bath. But five minutes into the process, the linens had turned cool, leaving me in a clammy cocoon. Any rise in blood pressure could only be attributed to shivering. The wrap is supposed to be 50 minutes; after 10 I was begging to be sprung.

Whether a $90 herbal wrap does anything to “detoxify” the body is up for debate. As with many spa treatments anywhere, there is little medical documentation that these treatments have physiological benefits. But for people like us at a place like this, that wasn’t the point.

When Nancy Gresham, a customer in the Quiet Room, heard where John was headed next, she said, “Take your spoon with you.” And, in fact, the Chocolate Fondue Wrap sounded like the most delicious of the spa’s services.

The reality was soothing, if not tasty. A therapist softly scrubbed his arms, legs and back with a soft-bristled brush to exfoliate his skin. Then he painted John from neck to toe with an inedible concoction of chocolate-laced mud. A light plastic sheet covered his body, followed by a silver foil thermal blanket and finally yards of milk-chocolate-colored terry cloth. He was supposed to sweat out toxins and suck in the mud’s beneficial minerals, thereby taking away his aches and pains.

The swaddling lasted for about a half-hour while the therapist performed “sacral-cranial manipulation’-a head massage, in other words. When John was finished, he was hosed clean with the Vichy shower. Whether any toxins were sweated out or beneficial minerals sucked in is anybody’s guess.

“Who cares about the toxins?” John said. “It was a comfy, toasty way to spend 50 minutes.”

Of all the services John and I sampled, the best one had nothing to do with chocolate. It was a good, old-fashioned pummeling.

Massage is what the Hershey Spa does best.

My therapist, Tina Chiffo again, had the two most important attributes for a gifted masseuse: fingers of steel and the good sense to know when to be quiet.

Chiffo can do the regular Swedish massage, but that would be a waste of her talent. She’s trained in shiatsu, a form of body manipulation that zeros in on trouble spots you don’t even know are troubled.

The massage rooms are little rectangles of tranquillity, with New Age music, heated pads on the tables and muted lights. After an hour here, John and I finally reached the silky goo stage, and we oozed back to the Quiet Room.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Guidebook: Getting a Taste of Hershey

* Getting there: Baltimore- Washington International Airport is about 100 miles south of Hershey, Pa. Nonstop service from LAX is on United and US Airways; direct service (at least one stop but no change of planes) is on Southwest. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $358.

* Where to stay: The Hotel Hershey, P.O. Box 400, Hotel Road, Hershey; telephone (717) 533- 2171, fax (717) 534-8887, Internet https://www.hersheypa.com. Standard rooms are $199 to $299 plus tax per night.

* Spa treatments: Sample prices (excluding mandatory 20% tip): 25-minute cocoa butter scrub, $55; 60-minute chocolate fondue wrap, $90; 15-minute rain shower, $25; 50-minute stone massage, $95; 60-minute men’s facial, $85; 35-minute pedicure, $45.

* Packages: Brochure rates are based on double occupancy and do not include tax and tips. Prices listed here are valid through May 24. The Good Life package includes one night’s lodging, breakfast and five spa services per person for $259 midweek, $369 weekends. The Hershey Escape includes lodging for two nights, breakfast and eight spa services. The cost is $478 per person midweek, $658 on weekends.

Hershey Immersion includes three nights’ lodging, breakfast and nine spa services. The cost ranges from $627 per person midweek to $897 per person weekends.

* Where to eat: The hotel’s Circular Dining Room serves upscale, well-prepared continental cuisine in a grand, formal setting. Appetizers run $6 to $13, entrees $20 to $34. Reservations required. Tel. (717) 534-8800. The Hershey Pantry, 801 E. Chocolate Ave.; local tel. 533-7505. Good country cooking with sandwiches, pasta, steaks. Casual atmosphere. Entrees $4 to $21. No credit cards. Open Monday through Saturday.

* Other attractions: Hersheypark, 100 W. Hersheypark Drive; tel. 534-3900, https://www.hersheypa.com. Features roller coasters and other rides. Open daily in summer and on weekends in late spring and early fall. Admission is $33.95 for ages 9 to 54, $18.95 for others (kids under 3 free). Hershey Museum, on the grounds of Hersheypark; tel. 534-3439. Tells history of Milton Hershey and his chocolate empire, displays Hershey’s collection of Native American artifacts and items detailing Pennsylvania German life. Open daily. Admission $3 to $6.

* For more information: Hershey Entertainment Resorts, 100 W. Hersheypark Drive, Hershey, PA 17033; tel. (800) 437-7439. Pennsylvania Center for Travel, Tourism and Film Promotion, 404 Forum Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120; tel. (800) VISIT-PA (847-4872), fax (717) 787-0687, https://www.state.pa.us.