With hot mineral pools, ice baths, a 40-person sauna, infrared heat, steam, advanced recovery technology and luxury treatments beside Coogee Beach, Èliva is setting a new benchmark for Australian wellness
There are day spas, there are bathhouses, and then there are wellness spaces that make you rethink what a city spa can be. Èliva Spa at InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach falls firmly into the third category.
Set just above one of Sydney’s most famous beaches, this new coastal wellness destination combines serious thermal bathing, recovery technology, beautifully designed treatment spaces and an unusually strong sense of place. After experiencing it, I would go further: this is one of the most impressive day spa and bathhouse experiences in Australia right now.
The location is a large part of what makes it so successful. Èliva sits within the newly reimagined InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, just metres from the Pacific Ocean, where the sound, light and colour of the coast naturally become part of the wellness experience.
Coogee has always been associated with swimming, movement, ocean pools and outdoor living, so a high-end bathhouse here feels far more organic than inserting one into the basement of a city hotel.
The hotel itself combines the spa with an oceanfront infinity pool, 24-hour fitness centre and pickleball courts, reinforcing the idea that wellness is not something confined to a treatment room. There are even soudn healing sessions at dusk by the pool which I have attended and absolutely loved.
A Bathhouse Designed Around Heat, Cold and Recovery
The star of Èliva is unquestionably the thermal bathing area. Rather than offering a token sauna beside a small plunge pool, the spa has created a substantial hydrotherapy circuit that encourages guests to spend real time moving between heat, water and cold.
There are four magnesium mineral pools, including wonderfully warm and hot whirlpool-style pools that invite you to stay far longer than planned. The warmth is deeply relaxing, particularly when contrasted with the cold-water facilities that sit nearby, best enjoyed after a log sauna.
The spa also includes two cold plunge pools, giving guests the option to alternate between heat and cold in a more deliberate contrast-therapy ritual. There are vitamin C showers and an ice fountain, which add another layer to the thermal circuit. The baths sit on an outside deck surrounded by greenery which is soothing and calm.
Then there are the heat experiences. The enormous traditional salt sauna is one of the most impressive spaces in the spa, with room for around 40 people, making it feel closer to the scale of a European bathhouse than a conventional hotel sauna.
There is also a large infrared sauna, allowing guests to choose a gentler, more enveloping heat, as well as a substantial steam room with slick mosaic tiles. The combination means this is not a facility you visit briefly before a massage; it is somewhere you could easily spend several hours – and then spend more time outside in the Coogee surrounds.
That scale matters. Sydney already has a growing number of excellent sauna and cold-plunge studios, but Èliva brings together the volume and variety of a bathhouse with the polished service, treatments and setting of a luxury hotel spa. Sydney now has a surprisingly dense recovery scene, spanning traditional saunas, infrared, ice baths, steam rooms and red-light facilities, yet few combine so many modalities in one refined luxury hotel environment facing the ocean.
Why the Coogee Setting Changes the Experience
What elevates Èliva beyond the facilities themselves is the fact that the spa feels connected to the ocean outside it. There is something particularly effective about moving through hot mineral water, sauna and cold plunge knowing Coogee Beach is just beyond the building.
The interiors draw strongly from the coast, using soft natural light, pale stone, timber and a muted, calming palette rather than the dark, clinical aesthetic still common in urban wellness. The result is sophisticated without feeling over-designed. Even the transition spaces are considered, with curved architectural lines and a calm visual rhythm that reflect the movement of water.
Treatments Go Well Beyond the Traditional Massage
Èliva has five treatment suites and uses an unusually personalised approach to treatments. Each experience begins with consultation, after which therapists tailor botanical blends and therapeutic elements to what the guest needs on the day.
The spa positions its philosophy around three states — Rest, Recover and Invigorate — rather than expecting every visitor to follow the same treatment pathway. There are modern massage tables that can be part raised and are heated for maximum comfort.
The treatment menu extends from massage and body therapies to high-performance facials, recovery treatments and more technologically led experiences. Èliva has partnered with luxury Hungarian skincare house Omorovicza for facial treatments, while its own product range incorporates Australian botanicals and ingredients including Desert Lime, Caviar Lime, Native Lime, Lilly Pilly, native plums, macadamia oil and Australian-grown organic olives.
There is also a thoughtful ritual element. Guests can begin at the spa’s Herbal Ritual Bar, where oils and botanical blends are selected and personalised before treatments. This adds a sensory and highly individual dimension that is often missing in larger spas, where treatment menus can feel standardised despite the luxury surroundings.
The newly launched Èliva botanical collection extends this experience beyond the spa itself, with a Mineral Mask, Body Oil, Face Oil, Hammam Soap, Hydrating Mist and Lip Balm designed around different stages of the bathing and recovery ritual. The Hammam Soap, for example, is used to prepare the skin before thermal bathing, while oils and masks can be incorporated after heat, steam and exfoliation.
The Recovery Lounge Makes This More Than a Bathhouse
One of Èliva’s strongest points is that it recognises the difference between relaxation and recovery. They are related, but they are not the same thing.
Beyond the thermal area is a dedicated Recovery Lounge using wellness technology that would have been considered highly specialised only a few years ago. The current offering includes PEMF infrared mats, LED facial masks, compression boots and vibroacoustic therapy, allowing guests to layer more targeted recovery onto the bathing experience.
This is particularly relevant for people who train regularly, travel frequently or simply arrive physically depleted. Compression can be used after long flights or heavy exercise, while PEMF and infrared-based technologies are increasingly appearing in more progressive recovery clinics and wellness centres.
Èliva also offers shorter targeted experiences for guests who do not want a full spa day. Contrast therapy sessions, thermal immersion and standalone sauna sessions make the space more usable for locals rather than restricting it to special occasions. That flexibility is important because the strongest modern wellness concepts are becoming part of people’s weekly routines, not somewhere they visit once a year.
A New Kind of Luxury Hotel Wellness
What Èliva gets right is that it does not treat wellness as decoration. The mineral pools, salt sauna, infrared sauna, steam, cold plunges and recovery technology are not tucked away as secondary amenities for hotel guests. They form a serious standalone wellness destination that happens to sit inside a luxury hotel.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important. Travellers now arrive with far more sophisticated expectations around recovery, strength, sleep, contrast therapy and nervous-system regulation, espeically when jet lagged. A beautiful treatment room and a conventional massage menu are no longer enough for many luxury guests.
Èliva responds to that shift while remaining genuinely pleasurable. You do not need to understand the science of contrast therapy or PEMF to enjoy sitting in a hot mineral pool, moving into the sauna, cooling down in an ice bath and finishing in a quiet recovery lounge.
Is Èliva the Best Day Spa and Bathhouse in Australia?
I know that calling anything “the best” is subjective, particularly in a country with an increasingly impressive wellness sector. But having experienced spas and bathhouses in Australia and internationally, Èliva stands out because of the completeness of the proposition, and I guess because it is so new.
It has scale without feeling overwhelming, technology without becoming clinical, treatments without relying solely on pampering, and one of the most naturally beautiful urban wellness locations in the country. The combination of three mineral pools, enormous salt sauna, infrared sauna, steam room, two cold plunges, recovery technology and serious treatment facilities would already make it noteworthy.
Placing all of that beside Coogee Beach pushes the experience into another category. You could arrive in the morning, spend time moving through heat and cold, have a treatment, recover in the lounge, walk beside the ocean and leave feeling as though you had travelled much further than Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
For me, that is what makes Èliva so compelling. It is not simply one of Sydney’s best new spas. It represents a much more ambitious idea of what an Australian day spa and bathhouse can be.
Èliva Spa is located at InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, 242 Arden Street, Coogee, NSW. The spa is open to guests aged 18 and over, with thermal bathing, treatments and recovery experiences available to both hotel guests and day visitors.
