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(Bloomberg) — Opening on April 14, luxury wellness club Surrenne spans four floors and 2,000 square meters (21,500 square feet) of subterranean space beneath the new, all-suite Emory hotel in London’s Knightsbridge. It includes zen-style rooms for medical consultations, a gym floor with electrostimulation machines, a 22-meter pool, spacious spa treatment areas and the UK’s sole fitness studio from famed trainer Tracy Anderson.  

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The cost? £10,000 per year ($12,550), plus a £5,000 initiation fee. Access will be free to guests at either the Emory or the neighboring Berkeley hotel—along with Surrenne, they’re both part of the luxury Maybourne hotel group—meaning that high-paying members will be working out next to well-heeled hotel guests. (A night at the Berkeley starts at around £780.)

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On a pre-opening visit, the facilities were impressive: serene and bright, despite being underground. I spoke over green juice with Inge Theron, creative director at Maybourne and founder of cult favorite beauty brand Facegym. 

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Details throughout the club feel notably upscale. The ceiling above the lap pool is plastered with gold leaf, and calming music is piped underwater to swimmers; Theron says members can request bespoke playlists to hear in the pool. In the spa and cafe, she says artificial intelligence has been deployed so that the calming musical vibe never repeats—even if it sounded no different to my ears than what’s played at other luxury spas. Treatment rooms sport canvases in enticing sunrise and sunset hues, and designer Remi Tessier has hung Damien Hirst prints on the walls.

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“Our membership fee reflects the one-of-a-kind offering—and one of the most robust inclusion lists on the market,” says Theron. 

Surrenne is likely to rank among London’s top spas, although unlike at Claridges or the Corinthia, you can’t book ad hoc treatments unless you’re a member or hotel guest.

What’s Included

Members will find Technogym machines, Hydrow products, Pelotons and EMS machines that shock muscles while training to give an intense workout in 20 minutes. In the changing rooms the toilets are from Toto, the hairdryers Dyson, and sinks and countertops a sleek, light-pink onyx. Rattan and wood lockers hold colorful Alice Temperley-designed robes and the initiation gift of a customized Alo yoga set. 

An entire floor is dedicated to fitness pioneer Tracy Anderson, famous for training the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna. “Tracy Anderson has been a huge driver for membership,” says Theron. “People were banging on the door to get her here in the UK.”

Members get 12 of Anderson’s high-energy classes a year, with additional classes at £40 per session; hotel guests can book starting at £55. In accordance with her signature practice, the studio area is heated to 95F with 75% humidity and resistance bands are attached to the ceiling. Classes consist of her “method,” which involves a high amount of reps with low weights.

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The £10,000 annual price tag includes blood tests performed by concierge doctors from 3 Peak Health in a one-time medical consultation to create a comprehensive wellness plan that might include vitamin supplements or specific exercises. Referrals to specialists such as women’s health experts, for example, could be issued in the event that hormonal issues are discovered. Three subsequent fitness assessments are to provide tracking benchmarks. 

“We will have all this data for members to see if they are sleeping better, if their VO2 max is improved, if their stress levels are better. We are checking against real metrics they can track,” says Theron.  

On the beauty side, members get four body treatments or facials annually. Surrenne has partnerships with Stella McCartney Beauty and Dr. Lara Devgan, a New York-based plastic surgeon, although it is not offering aesthetic treatments such as Botox or fillers at this time. 

Model-turned-nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson has consulted on the menu for the onsite cafe, which features £39 grilled salmon with kale and tahini yogurt and £20 “skin and tonic” mocktails with collagen, electrolytes and nonalcoholic gin. 

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Battle of the Hotel Gyms

Surrenne, while having one of the highest price points, is not alone in pushing the bounds of luxury fitness and wellness in London.

“Just having a spa is not enough for a luxury hotel,” says Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at Euromonitor. “We’re seeing more and more medical spas, which are uberluxury and focused on things like biohacking or longevity.” Roberts says that consumers increasingly seek a more pragmatic approach to wellness—along with evidence that treatments are working. 

In the past year, Pillar Wellbeing launched at Raffles London at the OWO, with members paying £6,500 a year for comprehensive, data-led health and fitness coaching led by fitness expert Harry Jameson; Pillar doesn’t include doctors. Club by Bamford in the Cotswolds, which offers fitness training in the bucolic English countryside, has a partnership with Effect Doctors, with a membership costing up to £15,000 a year.

Outside hotels, HVN is a new wellness center in Knightsbridge that has hyperbaric chambers, a power sculpt EMS machine, aesthetic treatments and £145 IV drips. Luxury gym Third Space, where membership starts above £200 a month, plans to add three new clubs this summer amid high demand in London.

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Surrenne aims initially to enlist 100 members to keep the facility from feeling crowded, given the hotel guests. Theron expects the offering to attract people already focused on health and fitness as priorities, though the club intends to satisfy all, including business travelers.

“Some hotel guests will just be here for a night or a weekend and will want a nice swim or world-class massage,” she says. Members are more likely to “work out regularly and take care of themselves, and they want to live longer, better lives. Some of them likely have [longevity expert] Peter Attia on their speed dial already.”

Theron intends to curate what she says is a like-minded community of “nice” individuals who care about their health and well-being. Surrenne’s application process consists of a straightforward online form as opposed to the referrals requested by such purely social London members clubs as Maison Estelle or Annabel’s.

“There are people who have these resources and are looking for ways to invest more in their well-being,” she says. “This is it.”

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