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This month, Aro Ha was recognised as Regenerative Wellness Travel Destination of the Year at the Destination Deluxe Awards in Bangkok - an inspiring moment to stand alongside global leaders in wellness and receive such a prestigious honour. Soon after, we were again acknowledged as New Zealand’s Best Wellness Retreat at the World Spa Awards, and named among the Top 20 Destination Spa Resorts in the world by Conde Nast Traveler readers.
I’m deeply grateful for these recognitions, and even more so for what they represent. Awards help shine a light on the community of guests, guides, and collaborators who make Aro Ha what it is. They also affirm that the work happening in our little valley is resonating with the wider world - that regenerative living, mindfulness, and human connection are not niche luxuries, but vital pathways for our time.
The word 'regenerative' appears often in wellness spaces, but I think we sometimes skip over what it actually requires. Regeneration doesn't happen in a vacuum, it emerges from degeneration. Growth, whether personal or planetary, almost always follows breakdown. Most of us arrive at transformation not through comfort, but through heartache, loss, exhaustion, or the quiet collapse of what we thought we needed to be.
This pattern plays out everywhere in nature. Soils regenerate through decomposition. Forests renew after fire. Stars are born from the violent collapse of cosmic dust. Our bodies rebuild strength through the hormetic stress of movement and rest. The same principle holds for human consciousness - we often need something to collapse before we can see clearly, before we can grow into what's next.
Aro Ha exists in service of this cycle. We create the conditions for guests to metabolise what needs to be released, so that something vital can emerge in its place. Not as an escape from difficulty, but as a place that honours the necessity of breakdown in the process of renewal.
Behind the scenes, much of our recent work has been focused on providing tangible insight into our guests' longevity. Not longevity in the narrow sense of adding years, but in the fuller sense: living long, living well, and living fully.
Our guests consistently tell us that they don’t just want to survive, they want to thrive - with clarity of mind, vitality in the body, and purpose in their days. This aspiration is shaping the way we continue to evolve our programs.
With that in mind, we’ve just released the latest version of our award winning Revive & Thrive program. We’ve improved the flow of the experience, added intelligence and depth to the process. Aro Ha is a living experiment in transformation.
We use first principles to revisit each element of the program to assume it’s optimised for our modern guests. Based on our guests' needs, we’ve moved from 6-day to a 7-day retreat format. It may sound like a small change, but it’s one that carries weight.
That extra day gives us space to add layers of sophistication to the arc of the retreat, to deepen the work of reconnection, and to allow practices to land in a way that stays with our guests long after they’ve left. It also reflects our responsibility: to do more than offer a beautiful week in the mountains, but to equip people with the tools, practices, and insights to truly transform their lives.
These recognitions remind us that Aro Ha sits at the intersection of personal transformation and global regeneration. Each guest who leaves here lighter, clearer, and more attuned to what matters is not just improving their own life - they’re rippling change outward into their families, workplaces, and communities. That’s the real award.
Thank you for being part of this journey, for trusting us with your time, and for sharing your energy with Aro Ha. The next chapter will be a continuation of what has always defined us: presence, simplicity, connection, and the belief that a better world starts with how we live, today.
With gratitude,
Damian
