Meet Aquapool Spas

In 2002, my husband and I were newly married and had just purchased our first home south of Copenhagen. Our first son was only six months old at the time. Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed sales and marketing, I developed my skills by helping my father with his real estate business after school when I was just thirteen years old. I later studied Export and languages, and my career began in sales when I started working for a Biotech company.

My husband, Claus, finished his degree in economics and worked for a large mobile phone company. We both come from families of hard-working entrepreneurs. However, one summer night in 2002, we looked at each other and realized that living in Denmark was not our destiny. Instead, we wanted to explore life in Southern Spain, where my father had relocated a few years earlier. So, we made the decision to move to Spain.

After settling in Spain and dedicating ourselves to learning Spanish, my father and his wife were building a new house that included a hot tub in the swimming pool area. However, finding the right hot tub was more challenging than expected. They searched everywhere on the Costa del Sol for a high-quality hot tub, but couldn’t find what they were looking for. Eventually, my father discovered HotSpring Spas online and learned that they didn’t have a local dealer. He contacted HotSpring Spas in the US and made an appointment to see their hot tubs at a Pool & Spa fair in Barcelona, 1,000 km away. He invited me to join him at the show.

When I saw the hot tubs and their quality, I thought to myself, “I would love to sell a product that helps people take care of their health.” There was an opportunity to become the local dealer on the Costa del Sol, and I called Claus to share my excitement. I said, “Now I know what we will do for a living: we will start a hot tub business.”

In the process of testing the interest in the market, we converted our garden into a space for showing the hot tubs and put four models on display. We sold five Spas in the first month.

Six months later, we opened a state-of-the-art 500m² showroom in San Pedro de Alcántara, Marbella, with space for displaying more than 30 hot tubs and a private area for test soaks. It has been our flagship showroom ever since…and we love the atmosphere and the buzz!

From there it went quite fast, in 2006 we opened a second showroom in Mijas and in 2007 we opened our third showroom in Algarrobo Costa (east of Málaga).

Unfortunately, the 2009 recession hit everybody hard and it was necessary to make cost savings. Fortunately, we were able to hang in there, as we were the only Spa dealer on the Costa del Sol, since all competitors had gone out of business. We recovered stronger and opened again a showroom in Fuengirola in 2015.

The first 10 years were mainly focused on getting the hot tubs on the wish list for many local home owners. We worked hard at getting Aquapool Spas known as the best hot tub dealer on the coast, and I guess this was accomplished when people started asking for an “Aquapool” rather than a hot tub!

We threw a big party when we reached our 10 year mile stone. Many clients, friends and collaborators participated in the celebrations.

When the opportunity to open a showroom on a top-location in Fuengirola arrived, we didn’t have to think twice. We opened the showroom on the 1st of September 2015 and the first month proved that this was a great decision, so many local people came to buy their long-awaited hot tub, it was a great start of another success for us.

Like for everyone else, the start of 2020 was insecure and our business was forced to close to the public due to the world pandemic. We had to think outside of the box to find a solution that would allow us to continue to help our current clients, and how could we offer our hot tubs to new clients (who all of a sudden were forced to stay at home).

We expanded our online services offering virtual consultations and we very quickly filmed and added a 3D showroom to our website.  In two weeks, we filmed and produced more than 20 individual hot tub presentation videos, and they were added to our YouTube channel.

During the Summer of 2022, we also decided to add a designer Spa brand to our product range, and so we became the exclusive dealer of the Italian Treesse Spas. Many architects and interior designers in Marbella had been searching for designer Spas to match the new and modern housing architecture, and Treesse was the perfect product.

Ever since we acquired the Fuengirola showroom in 2015 we dreamt about transforming it into a new modern, state-of-the-art showroom. Our showroom in San Pedro (and the decoration) also needed to be freshened-up, so we decided that this year would be the perfect time to improve the standard of both locations.

We want our showrooms to reflect our company’s high standards and values whilst offering the best conditions to display our Spa brands. This is exactly what we achieved, in September 2022 both showrooms underwent a big transformation.

Another milestone for our company was when were notified that we had been selected to receive the international award for “2021 Outstanding Service Department”, which is exclusively granted to only one International HotSpring Spas dealer each year. One of the reasons highlighted for Aquapool Spas winning this award, was our way of handling the challenging service work throughout the pandemic.

After several years of growth and lots of hard work, we wanted to treat our staff by inviting them to participate in the HotSpring conference in January 2023 in San Diego. This way they would be able to see the factories and to meet fellow dealers. It was a great experience for us all – and the absolute highlight of the visit was receiving the prestigious dealer award for “Best Marketing & Promotions 2022”.

To read stories from our amazing clients – read our reviews on Facebook or Google.