Festival wellness pop-up service Wild Wellbeing is to appear at Camp Bestival in Dorset, UK, providing spa experiences for attendees lining up to hear musicians including Clean Bandit, the Kaiser Chiefs and Professor Green. The festival will take place between 30 July and 2 August at Lulworth Castle.

Founder and managing director of Wild Wellbeing, Colette Crespin, told Spa Opportunities about the challenges of operating a spa and massage sanctuary in a festival environment.

“We use hand-crafted, beautifully decorated yurts, with two therapists in each yurt divided by a privacy screen. We will be installing five yurts at Camp Bestival running simultaneously every day with treatments running all day,” said Crespin.

In addition to the yurts used for massage, other complementary wellness offerings in the Wild Wellbeing spa zone, called The Hideaway, include eco showers, a transformation station – for beauty – a yoga tent, organic café, juice stall, organic coffee camper and a selection of wellbeing-focused market stalls.

“We are still in talks for Camp Bestival as to who is going to be our official skincare partner,” said Crespin. “In the past we have collaborated with REN, Mio and Jurlique. We are working with Neal’s Yard Remedies at Wilderness Festival this year too.”

We get our yoga mats and equipment from Yoga Matters and our shower facilities offer Eco Towels, which are biodegradable.

Crespin said Wild Wellbeing embraces the challenge of running a spa operation at a festival.

“Execution is always streamlined in pre-production prep; the fun really begins on-site when variants start to occur like extreme weather conditions, or logistical changes – but that’s the fun of it! If it was all plain sailing it would be pretty boring.”

While problems mainly arise due to the weather, the key challenge is co-ordinating a team of up to 300 people in varying roles from reception staff to independent pitch therapists, decor teams, runners, brand partners, to in-house massage and facial therapists.

Wild Wellbeing’s intention is to provide bespoke wellbeing events for festivals, but also for private events, corporate occasions and pop-ups.

“We already have facilities outside of our festival operations, for example we tailor corporate retreats for workplaces that want to offer wellbeing services to their staff but don’t have facilities in-house,” added Crespin. “We support local therapists by providing them with work and we also look to empower our clients to see how they can sustain their wellbeing in the long-term – not just for the period of time they spend within our spaces.”