In June 2025 Grecotel’s Cape Sounio opened a wellness programme written for it by someone else. The resort has 139 keys in pine woods above the Temple of Poseidon, at the southern tip of Attica. Its new programme, Elevations of Wellness, was created by Vicky Vlachonis, an osteopath born in Athens who practises in Los Angeles. It arrived in a spa the resort had rebuilt in that year’s renovation. The same work took in the lobby and entrance, the large seawater pool, and a poolside restaurant with an open kitchen and wood-fired ovens.
A resort can put together a treatment menu in a single season. Handing the shape of its wellness practice to a named practitioner, and building it as a series of levels a guest climbs, takes longer and is harder to undo.
A programme in four levels
Elevations of Wellness has four levels, and each is written to follow on from the one below. The first guides the guest into deep relaxation and inner balance. The second turns to rejuvenation and restoring energy. The third is described as a deep, integrative approach to healing that brings body and mind into balance. The fourth uses gentle but strong techniques to release tension and reset the nervous system.
Across those levels sit the practices Vlachonis brought with her: therapeutic massage, grounding rituals, dry brushing with olive oil, planned nutrition, guided walks and meditation. The programme sets out to combine ancient Greek healing with modern science, with a particular focus on the link between mind and body and the part digestion plays in both.
The practitioner
Vlachonis holds a master’s degree in osteopathy from the European School of Osteopathy. She has spent more than 20 years at leading clinics, treating pain through the connection between mind and body. Her clients have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Lady Gaga, Nicole Richie and Sir Elton John. She wrote the book The Body Doesn’t Lie, and she founded Saint Supply, a brand of organic olive oil.
Her Athenian roots matter here. She wrote the programme for a headland she knew before she knew the clinics, and its language of the sea, the pines and the temple on the point comes from the place itself.
Where it happens
The rebuilt spa has four private massage rooms, two of them double and two single, and an open-air heated hydrotherapy pool. There is also a fitness room with Technogym equipment, an indoor and outdoor gym facing the sea, a beauty salon, and a deck for yoga and Mat Pilates. The spa is open from 10am to 6.30pm, and only guests aged 16 and over may use the therapy pool. Every signature treatment can also be taken privately, in the guest’s room.
The walk to the temple
The programme’s signature experience leaves the building. It is a guided walk to the Temple of Poseidon, with stretching and meditation along the way, so the fifth-century BC sanctuary is reached on foot instead of seen from a terrace. The therapy pool carries the same idea into the water, with a guided swim meditation or a session timed to sunrise, sunset or the full moon.
The resort’s own ground gives it what most spas have to bring in: the sea light, the pines and the marble on the point. The best hours of the programme are the ones that take the guest out into it.
Fifty years and a third generation
The collaboration was announced as Grecotel marked 50 years. Nikos Daskalantonakis founded the group, which runs some 40 hotels across 15 Greek destinations. Odyssia Sifounaki-Daskalantonaki, of the founding family’s third generation, presented the programme and the finished renovation together as a statement of what the group means to be: personal care and a Greek way of life, joined with something new.
The resort itself makes the same case. The main building recalls an ancient temple. The lobby has a site-specific installation by Nefeli Massia and works by Takis. Eight restaurants and bars are spread through the grounds. The airport is 40 minutes away and the city 50. The estate has always drawn on being close to one of the most photographed headlands in Greece.
Who is this for
Elevations of Wellness suits a guest who wants hands-on treatment, gentle movement and time outdoors, shaped by one practitioner’s method. The spa pavilion stands on round columns over a shallow pool, at the edge of a clipped lawn with pines, agaves and a palm, and the ruined temple stands on the headland across the water. On the yoga deck, mats and bolsters lie under umbrella pines with the sea behind. Saint Supply olive oil is available throughout the resort.
