Jun. 24--Orlando usually isn't a place visitors come to rest. It's where parents exhaust themselves keeping up with their kids in fantasy worlds that can be miserably hot or sopping wet with rain. 

But as Central Florida draws more sophisticated, affluent travelers and business groups, a small but growing number of resorts are trying to stand out by offering their guests Swedish massages, pedicures and "herbal cleansings." 

Spas, for years a staple of grownup getaways such as Las Vegas and Palm Springs, are becoming an essential amenity in family-friendly Orlando. 

Unlike spartan hotel "health clubs," with wobbly exercise bikes, a lone treadmill and a sauna, these are luxurious temples of relaxation where tense travelers are anointed with mango-scented oils and shrouded in seaweed wraps. 

Such services aren't entirely new near the attractions. 

Disney World opened the area's first full-service resort spa six years ago, at its Disney Institute. Soon after, spas opened at the former Buena Vista Palace, now called the Wyndham Palace Resort & Spa, and at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort. 

But since the first of the year, the competition has increased. 

Canyon Ranch, whose full-service destination spas rank among the world's best, has opened a scaled-down SpaClub at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center near Kissimmee. Canyon Ranch is 20,000 square feet, roughly half the size of the Spa at the Disney Institute. 

At the Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando, Steiner Leisure Ltd. has installed new management at the Greenhouse Spa, with plans to double the staff to about 50 people and increase operating hours. Steiner, the world's largest spa operator, bought that and 10 other Greenhouse spas a year ago. 

Meanwhile, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. LLC plans to open a 40,000-square-foot spa next summer at its Grande Lakes Resort, under construction on the John Young Parkway near the Central Florida Parkway in south Orange County. 

Part of a 500-acre resort that will include a 584-room Ritz-Carlton hotel and a 1,000-room JW Marriott hotel, the health spa will feature a private lap pool and 40 treatment rooms. 

Disney says it isn't about the competition. "Our guests have limited time, and they like having the spa close to their accommodations," spokeswoman Jacquee Polak said. 

So do a lot of travelers, it seems. 

Nationwide, the number of spas in hotels and resorts nearly doubled between 1995 and 2000, according to the International Spa Association, a Lexington, Ky.-based trade group. There were 473 hotel and resort spas in 2000, about 8 percent of the total of all spas. 

Gaylord's general manager, John Caparella, said Central Florida is "behind the curve when it comes to spas." 

For years, hotels here saw no need to add spas, Caparella said. "It wasn't perceived to be a competitive advantage to have a spa," he said. 

But that's changing as the market matures, Caparella said. 

Resort spa users typically are women in their mid-40s with household incomes of $122,000 a year, according to the latest research from the International Spa Association. 

While it's impossible to tell exactly how many of Central Florida's roughly 43 million annual visitors match that profile, it's clear the area is drawing more affluent travelers than just a few years ago. 

On average, out-of-state visitors to Central Florida had household incomes of $67,000 a year in 2000, according to the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau. In 1994, the average was $55,000. 

"There's a significant demand for luxury products that we haven't had before in Orlando," ranging from upscale shopping to spas, said Ezzat Coutry, regional vice president for Ritz-Carlton. 

While the Gaylord Palms markets the Canyon Ranch as a convenience to people attending conventions and business meetings at the hotel, Ritz-Carlton plans to tout its health spa as a destination unto itself. 

"It's not an amenity," Coutry said. "It's a very specific business. It's a profit center." 

Experts say spas can be a significant source of revenue for hotels. 

Spas in hotels and resorts saw mean revenue of $1.4 million in 2000, according to the spa association. 

Typically, 15 percent to 25 percent of a hotel or resort spa's revenue is profit, said Patty Monteson, co-owner of Health Fitness Dynamics, a resort spa consulting firm based in Pompano Beach. 

Compared with lodging and restaurants, spas are usually a small part of a resort's overall business, Monteson said. 

For example, only 6 percent to 12 percent of guests at the 1,400-room Gaylord Palms visit the Canyon Ranch SpaClub, spa manager Brennan Evans said. Seventy percent are hotel guests, he said. The rest are locals. 

"But the intangible benefits [of a spa] are unbelievable," Monteson said. 

Canyon Ranch, for example, helps draw business groups to the Gaylord Palms, which has a 400,000-square-foot convention center. 

"It's a deal breaker for some groups, in that they won't choose a hotel that doesn't have a spa," Caparella said. Companies often use spas as a reward for employees and an incentive for travel, he said. 

Tower Hill Insurance Group of Gainesville recently rewarded 160 of its best agents with a trip to Orlando. It chose the Gaylord Palms in large part because of the Canyon Ranch SpaClub, said Lura Leigh Willhite, an assistant vice president. 

"Disney has great spas, too, but because it was Canyon Ranch, that made a big difference," Willhite said. 

Spas, of course, are equally powerful draws for individual travelers. 

"In your daily routine, you never really totally relax," said a very relaxed Patrick Barnes, a 46-year-old pharmacist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa., who had just received a massage at the SpaClub. 

And Barnes, who visits spas every chance he gets, said the Canyon Ranch is one of the nicest he has seen. 

That's why Gaylord chose Canyon Ranch, Caparella said. 

"We said, `Well, who's No. 1 in the market?' " he said. "We got to Canyon Ranch pretty quickly." 

With resorts in Tucson and in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts and only one other hotel spa, at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, Canyon Ranch is much smaller than Greenhouse's parent, Steiner. 

But its resorts have a loyal following and a excellent reputation. Readers of Travel + Leisure magazine rated the original Canyon Ranch spa in Tucson as the world's best. 

Not that the Greenhouse at the Portofino Bay Hotel is without followers. 

Sitting on a sofa in the spa's lounge, Tonja and Gilbert Allen waited for their massages. This was Tonja's second trip to the spa, and George's first. 

Gilbert Allen, a 37-year-old builder from Orlando, said going to the spa was his wife's idea. "She planned for us to spend a day here." 

Was it a tough sell? 

"Kind of," he said. 

"Yes," she added. 

But Tonja Allen, a 36-year-old real estate agent, said she enjoyed her first trip to the Greenhouse Spa so much that she wanted her husband to experience it, too. 

Loews Hotels, which operates all three of Universal Orlando's hotels, decided early on to have a branded spa on the theory that it would attract more guests than a generic one, said Michael Sansbury, Loews' regional vice president. 

It chose Greenhouse because the company has day spas in New York City and in the affluent suburbs of other Northeastern cities that are feeder markets to Orlando, he said. 

With rates starting at $249 a night, Portofino Bay Hotel caters mostly to well-off travelers who like to pamper themselves while on vacation, Sansbury said, and spas are all about pampering. 

Services at the Greenhouse Spa include a 45-minute reflexology massage, a treatment "based on the ancient belief that each organ in the body corresponds to a reflex point in the foot," costing $60; and a 75-minute "cellutox aroma spa ocean wrap," which a brochure describes as a "deeply detoxifying" treatment during which the guest is wrapped in a warm seaweed body mask then cocooned in "a comforting foil wrap" at a cost of $90. 

On a recent morning, Linda McAllister chose the seven-hour "day of beauty" that includes "nurturing face treatments," a massage, a pedicure and manicure, and a makeover for $315. 

"It's so worth it," said McAllister, 39, of Birmingham, Ala., sitting in a black recliner while a technician gives her a pedicure. 

McAllister, who didn't appear to have a tense muscle in her body, said, "My family's at Universal Studios, and I guarantee you that I'm having more fun than they are." 

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(c) 2002. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.