Spa & Massage began with a single clinic in Bayswater. Nearly two decades on, the business operates a growing group of locations across London and shows no intention of stopping there. The expansion has been deliberate, built on a model its founders believe can stretch well beyond the streets it currently occupies.
Aly-Khan Thobani co-founded the company with Nicole Thobani in 2007, after travelling in Asia where massage was treated as routine maintenance rather than occasional luxury. The idea they brought back was less about pampering and more about volume: regular, affordable, results-focused treatment delivered at scale. The first clinic opened in Bayswater, and the network has grown across the capital in the years since. The growth has followed that early logic rather than drifting from it.
“We have built 3 new clinics within a Year. We are aiming for 25 then we can look outside London,” Thobani says. It is an ambitious target, and one that says as much about how the company sees its market as about its own pipeline. The implication is that London alone can support a network several times the current size, and that the appetite for routine massage is nowhere near saturated.
A high-street model, not a hotel one
The strategy rests on location. Spa & Massage clinics sit on busy high streets rather than inside hotels or private members’ clubs, a choice that shapes everything from cost to footfall. There are no steam rooms, saunas, or scented waiting lounges. The format is closer to a treatment room than a spa day, and that simplicity is the point.
It keeps overheads lower than those of a destination spa and keeps prices within reach of repeat customers. The company reports thousands of weekly sessions, a figure that depends on clients returning often rather than splurging once. Extended hours reinforce the same aim. The clinics open early and close late, seven days a week, to accommodate lunch breaks and evening slots for a working population.
That repeat-visit economics is what makes the expansion case work. A business built on occasional luxury needs constant new customers. A business built on routine maintenance can grow on loyalty, and loyalty scales more predictably.
Credibility as a growth asset
Scaling a wellness brand carries a familiar risk: quality thins as the footprint grows. Spa & Massage has tried to guard against that by building its clinical positioning into the structure rather than bolting it on.
Treatments are overseen by Medical Director Professor Eyal Lederman, an academic in manual therapy and rehabilitation, and the company recruits experienced therapists rather than training entry-level staff. That standard is harder to maintain across more sites, but it is also what differentiates the brand from the crowded field of independent operators and mobile services. For a company courting both customers and, increasingly, investor attention, evidence-led credibility is a commercial asset, not just a clinical one.
The membership offering points the same way. Subscription-style plans encourage the steady, recurring revenue that investors tend to reward, and they reinforce the behaviour the whole model depends on: clients treating massage as a standing commitment rather than a one-off. It is a structure borrowed more from gyms than from spas, and it suits a business that measures success in retention rather than footfall.
The case for caution
Ambition of this kind invites scrutiny. A target of 25 London clinics, and expansion beyond the capital after that, would require capital, management depth, and consistent demand across very different neighbourhoods. The figures the company cites for clients and growth are its own and have not been independently verified. The wider spa and massage sector is competitive, fragmented, and sensitive to economic pressure, since discretionary wellness spending tends to soften when household budgets tighten.
None of that makes the plan unrealistic. Demand for massage as health maintenance has clearly risen, and a low-overhead, high-frequency model is arguably well placed to capture it. But the gap between three clinics in a year and a network of twenty-five is wide, and it will be closed, if at all, one location at a time.
For now, the direction is set. Thobani has named the number. Whether London fills it is the question the next few years will answer.
