CHRISTIANA, Manchester – Vacation packages boasting spa services are usually sold to city dwellers wishing to escape the hustle and bustle of their lives. But local hotelier Cheryl White-McDowell has decided to be different and offers spa services to ‘country’ people out of her 14-room, 29-capacity hotel in this Manchester town.

After 20-plus years of working at other hotels, White-McDowell wanted to develop and perfect a product she could call her own. So five years ago, she bought Hotel Villa Bella, a property that has been around since the 1940s.

“We have to be very creative as small hoteliers. But once the product is good, people will come,” White-McDowell said from a couch in the hotel’s living room, which she said contains some of the original art decor furniture.

Villa Bella is located on a hill opposite Holmwood Technical High School, away from Mandeville, Manchester’s capital city and commerical centre.

In addition to regular start-up challenges, White-McDowell realised other hiccups unique to her business once she got started, but decided from the get-go to turn them into opportunities. So instead of trying to attract guests to the rooms, she decided to introduce several auxiliary services, which she said form part of a “full experience” package.

These include spa services and a wedding centre, where residents of Christiana can pay for everything from bridal gowns to rose petals or bottles of champagne. “We can’t sell hotel rooms, obviously; we are selling an experience,” White-McDowell said. “When you wake up, you want to think about yourself. You want to eat well, sleep well. You want to do massages to get rid of all the toxins in your body… It’s a holistic approach to wellness,” she said. Included in this approach are apricot body scrubs, aroma algae body wraps and Swedish massages.

And has the ‘country’ crowd been receptive? “Definitely, definitely. So far I have been supported by the guests,” White-McDowell said, adding that as with any small business in early days, the challenge has been equating revenue with costs.

But back to the spa.

The small room has a single bed for doing massages and in the corner is the ‘steamer’ – a shower-stall-looking enclosure draped with white fabric, which covers a blue sun chair.

“We are not like those big hotels that have saunas and so on, but trust me…” White-McDowell said in an expression of confidence in the service offerings at Villa Bella – despite the limitations.

Guests from across Jamaica and the world are welcome. So far, White-McDowell said many of her guests have been returning Jamaicans. One of those guests, Juliet Lumden, was lounging on the terrace with her family when the Sunday Observer visited. Lumden said it was their second visit to Villa Bella, and that they planned to return.

“This is what you call tranquility,” she said, nodding with conviction. “And it’s safe.”

The hotel’s 100-capacity terrace, with its picturesque view of Christiana’s hilly terrain, and its gardens also host a variety of functions ranging from funerals to retreats. There is a nail and facial room and plans for a full-time nurse to do ECG and cholesterol tests, as well as an outdoor prayer garden. The garden, White-McDowell said, will be a peaceful enclave of sorts, in the already quiet surroundings.

“It’s just going to be a nice, quiet, pretty place,” she said, where groups or individuals can go for prayer or meditation. “It’s so cool up here. Everything just blends in with what we’re trying to do.”

The hotel’s wooden floors and one’s ability to smell the food being prepared from almost anywhere in the hotel add to its rustic appeal, but White-McDowell said “the ‘wow’ factor is the tranquility, the quaintness of the place”.

She added that the 10-member staff try to make the food and the customer service the best they can offer simply because “that’s the only way I can sell a place like this all the way up here”.

Huge favourites, she said, are the Villa Bella soul fish fillet in coconut sauce and the chicken in guava and orange sauce. And of course, ‘Miss Johnson’s piña colada’.

“We have here what we call the Villa Bella walk. We run to serve our customers… Nothing wrong with that – running to serve our customers,” White-McDowell said.