EWA Awards 2024: Winners Announced!
For "Immersive Sky", Therme Euskirchen receives the EWA Professional Award 2024.
(eap) For 22 years, the European Waterpark Association (EWA) has been presenting the “EWA Awards” for particularly innovative offerings and marketing concepts to European waterparks, leisure pools and spas. This year, the two prizes – the “EWA Professional Award” and the “EWA Marketing Award” – will be presented to Germany’s Therme Euskirchen and Austria’s Oberösterreichische (OÖ) Thermenholding, which operates thermal pools & spas in Bad Schallerbach, Bad Ischl and Bad Hall. The AquaMagis leisure pool in Plettenberg (also Germany) received a special prize for its measures to save energy and reduce the CO2 footprint.
Therme Euskirchen, part of Thermengruppe Josef Wund, receives the EWA Professional Award 2024 for its new “Immersive Sky” experience room, where spa guests can enjoy a kind of digital forest bathing (c.f. our article in EAP 3/2024). According to the EWA Awards jury, the project entitled “Forest Bathing – Lupuna”, which was realized in collaboration with the artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast from London and the designers from TheLoveTriangle, sets new standards in the design of immersive experiences.
OÖ Thermenholding receives this year’s EWA Marketing Award. In order to attract new trainees and apprentices to its thermal spa operations, the operator group has developed a concept that integrates social media tools into professional training in the form of specific education modules. At the same time, the company has made social media itself a key component of its apprenticeship campaign in the “battle” for new trainees and apprentices by having young employees act as ambassadors for their work placement (the associated thermal spas) on social media, achieving over two million clicks. The number of new apprentices increased by 30 percent thanks to the campaign. This success is now being given special recognition with the EWA Award.
In addition, the awards jury – Kim Adam (Adam + Partner Unternehmensberatung), Petra Probst (editor-in-chief of EuroAmusement Professional Trade Magazine) and Sonja Redies (Profund Consult) – decided to present an “EWA Sustainability Award” as this year’s special prize to AquaMagis in Plettenberg. The awards will be presented to the winners at a festive dinner at the Mövenpick Hotel Stuttgart Airport on October 22, on the evening of the first day of the interbad trade fair.
The finalists in both categories will also be honored for the first time. In addition to the award winners, these are (for the Professional Award): The Altmühltherme in Treuchtlingen (Project: Modernization of the Altmühltherme), the AquaMagis in Plettenberg and the Silvretta Therme Ischgl (Project: Innovation – Sustainability – Wellness Excellence). For the Marketing Award: Bodenseetherme in Überlingen (“Rebranding Bodenseetherme and chatbot ‘Peet’”) and Martins Therme & Lodge Frauenkirchen (“Raus aus dem Gatsch”). ■
