The new £500m resort with 18 water slides – ‘UK’s biggest attraction’

Stone Roses’ singer Ian Brown once said Manchester’s “got everything except a beach”, but soon the northern UK city will boast one of them too. In late 2028, beside the Trafford Centre mall and three miles from Manchester United’s stadium, the world’s largest wellbeing resort and spa will finally open its doors.

Therme Manchester will boast 18 indoor water slides, 22 saunas and steam rooms, lagoons, 10 pools, botanical gardens, cryo-recovery suites, a swim-up bar, 1,500 palm trees and all – except that beach – all within a tropical 33C heat. The 65,000 square-metre site will cost the German-founded wellness firm £500 million to build, pull in up to 3 million visitors a year, pump £4.5 billion annually into the UK economy and create over 1,000 jobs.

That’s not all – Therme Manchester could become the largest paid-for attraction in the UK with four more smaller resorts following in cities like Glasgow, Birmingham and London.

They also stress that they will be affordably priced for all ages, with sustainability and boosting the environment as goals – such as plans to 3D print the resort’s plastic furniture using recycled building waste.

Earlier this month the Express first visited Therme Manchester’s building site then flew out to Romania to see Therme Bucharest – half the size of the one being built in the North-West of England – to see what we can expect.

Chatting to Therme UK Chief Commercial Officer Jonathan Lingham while overlooking the main lagoon in Therme Bucharest, he excitedly told us: “The UK is going to love what we are bringing in 2028.

“Therme Manchester will consist of three zones: Play, Relax and Restore. ‘Play’ is the family area like a water park with 18 slides, a wave machine, indoor/outdoor pools, cabanas, sun lounges, music, excitement, everything for the kids.

“The other two areas are for 16s and over – ‘Relax’ is a chill out area, a large lagoon, indoor and outdoor again, Europe’s largest swim up bar, just an area to relax with friends and family and rejuvenate.

“Finally you have ‘Restore’ which is what you would imagine a world-leading spa to be – saunas, steam and snow rooms, cryogenics, technology-led well-being facilities available in the UK.”

Therme is a tried-and-tested brand, built on the long traditions of thermal and mineral bathing.

Originating in Germany, Therme Erding first opened in 1999, followed by a further three in the country and one in Romania. Therme Bucharest was built in 2016 and has been a huge success – but Manchester will be double the size.

Professor David Russell, CEO of Therme UK, gushed: “Nobody has ever created a project like this in the UK.”

Manchester was chosen as Britain’s first Therme due to its tram network, the canal waterways and the site being next door to the huge Trafford Centre shopping and leisure complex that already pulls in over 30 million people a year.

The UK is in the midst of a wellness crisis. One in four of us will experience a mental health problem each year, according to registered charity Mind.

Russell added: “Eventually 90% of the population will be within a 90-minute drive of a UK Therme – that’s the plan. We want to bring wellbeing to all.”

There will be no monthly membership fees; instead, punters might pay around £50 to spend half a day there, with discounts for off-peak visits, seniors, underprivileged families, and also if people have travelled there using public transport.

As well as wellness for individuals, Therme Manchester claims it will bring visitors to the region and an estimated £4.5 billion-a-year to the UK economy. The £500m build is a joint venture between Therme Group, headquartered in Vienna, and private equity giant CVC Capital Partners called ‘Therme Horizon’.

The pool water will be cleaned with eco-friendly ozone – which kills 99.9% of bacteria – made from oxygen on site, and reducing the use of chemicals like chlorine.

Once the ozone has dissipated, it will be similar to fresh water and can be pumped into local waterways to clean up Manchester’s canals.

With sustainability at its heart, Therme Manchester will boast air-source heat pumps and photovoltaic – or solar energy – systems to power their infrastructure while 20-odd bars and restaurants will offer fresh, sustainably sourced and nutritious meals and drinks.

Citing their green ambitions, David hopes to use giant 3D printers the size of shipping containers that use plastic raw material waste combined with a sugar, polylactic acid, to create furniture or even water slides for the site.

He added: “So our tables and our chairs, and we hope our slides, will be 3D printed through recycled material on site and we don’t know anybody else that’s doing that yet.”

With around 7,000 visitors at any one time, you would fear Therme Manchester will have endless rooms of lockers for you to change into your flip-flops, swimsuit and robe. Not at all.

There will be just a moderate number of lockers, but once you’ve placed your valuables inside, robotic arms move the contents and stow them away until you need them – and they are fetched back for you.

David told us: “At its peak we hope to achieve about 6,500 to 7,000 people on the site at any one time.

“That’s a lot of lockers and traditionally that would mean if your locker number was 600, it’d be quite hard to remember where that locker was.

“So when you go into a Therme, you get a wristband. You will use that to touch the locker, which will open. You put your clothes in there, close it up and a robotic arm will take that away and store it at a high level so that we utilize the space more effectively.”

Once Therme Manchester is fully open there will be 800 direct and 600 indirect jobs including customer service, lifeguarding, therapy, gardening and tech staff – as well as the vital aufguss staff, or sauna masters.

Not heard of a sauna master? Me neither until I sat in 70C heat at Therme Bucharest to experience a German Herbarium sauna and watched the ritual at work.

They entertain and add to the sauna experience by wafting scents, dancing with towels like flapping fans to move the burning incense around the space, while also telling folk stories or talking in poetry.

In another sauna experience, a Hungarian sauna master whacked me across the back with water-soaked oak branches in time to music. Mancunians will love it!

As we toured the Bucharest spa, Jonathan told us he wants Therme Manchester to not only boost the health of North-West England residents but also be an attraction that tourists will be desperate to visit.

He added: “We hope people will visit the Trafford Centre, United, Manchester City, Co-op Live, the shops and culture of Manchester – and go to Therme.

“One thing that Manchester does struggle with is the weather but Therme will be indoors with 33C heat and lovely clean swimming pools to enjoy.”

As Therme Manchester will have state-of-the-art sports recovery equipment worth tens of millions of pounds they even hope that Premier League clubs or rugby sides may even use their facilities like cryo-chambers.

But Jonathan stressed: “Because we’re operating at scale, we will be accessible to all price-wise. That’s a core value of Therme. We’re building something amazing in Manchester and everyone’s going to get to be able to use it.”