Miraj Hammam Spa — Local services in Vancouver

I booked Miraj Spa for two of us to celebrate my wife’s birthday but my experience was extremely bad and became a horror show. My appointment was at 3 PM and we got stuck in Vancouver traffic for more that 40 mins. Therefore despite starting early we started missing the schedule. I live in north van and hence sensing we would be late I kept calling them since I was at Lions Gate bridge and informing traffic situation and asked for any probable reschedule and asked for their recommendation, Hammam suggested that they can still keep my appointment and asked us to continue, hence following their assurance I continued driving but at a point where we were 30+ mins late, we finally thought to call it a day and called again to request f a reschedule and the the receptionist agreed, as she mentioned that they were aware of the situation as it happened to their staff and they understand. Everything was fine at this point although my wife was stressed as it was her birthday and our plans were beginning to crumble. But we did not want to waste Miraj's time as well waiting for us hence though of rescheduling as the best option. All this while we were still stuck at downtown. suddenly after the verbal confirmation from the receptionist for a next possible date she would let us know the day after. After 10 mins however a lady called again mentioned she was the manager and started to accuse us rudely of wasting their time and asked for full payment of services. To quote her “I had been running around to cancel other appointments to fit your schedule in” which I could not understand why and she did not explain as well . Remind you , My wife was answering the call at this point , since I was driving in heavy traffic, the manager knew fully the massage was to celebrate my wife's big day and still had no qualms in rebuking her and being extra rude in mentioning that if we don't pay them in full they will not pay their masseuses - as to quote her "They get paid only when client user their service!!" Really ! However my wife , by then almost crying due to the complete massacre of the experience and her rudeness managed to request for a negotiation and mentioned if we can pay additional 50% p in lieu of another booking date but she did not budge. She kept on being unnecessarily rude, inconsiderate and yelling . She said she will still charge us 80% of the total costs and no rescheduling at all , however I now see she charged 85% from my card statement. I felt the inconsistency in their own practices awful. Considering the receptionist was ready to reschedule us for free and then the manager came back at us yelling and charged 300$ almost for a 380$ service never given, was pathetic and unprofessional , not to mention the shady employment practice she kept on repeating to my wife - the employees don't get paid if the client don't show up!!!

I will never use any services from Miraj and neither I would advice any of my friends to use...

we had our first experience by booking a couples package with a 30 min massage. first off as per the website there are 3 retail spots for parking in the back - follow those instructions if you don’t want to pay for parking. now we arrived 5 min ahead of our appointment. we had to wait a very short time as another couple was in before us. we were led into the change room and given the sarongs. there are lockers for your personal belongings and you take the key (on a rubber bracelet type band.) we were then led into the attached steam room. after about 15 minutes my wife was taken out first and started her scrub treatment. i was left in the steam for another 10 minutes or so. my wife was scrubbed fully in her bday suite and once done went back into the steam room while i was scrubbed. i was given a small towel to cover my man part. once done we were led back into the change room where we were given robes and could use the bathroom while waiting for the massage. the couple before us were still in theirs so we were led to the lounge to wait. well this was a little awkward as the first person came out and was sitting waiting there across from us for the other (and its not a very big area.) after a few minutes we were taken in to 2 separate rooms. now here is where i’m lowering the score. my masseuse at times dug her nails into me and it was quite uncomfortable. my wife said her masseuse just rubbed around and didn’t do much of anything. after the 30 minutes we were led back to the lounge. we had our biscuit and tea but at this point we needed to start driving back to pick up our kids at school and not worry about traffic. we asked the receptionist if we could go change but as someone else was now doing their treatment we couldn’t get into the change room. we then waited another 15 or so minutes before we could go back in. once in there we started to change and all of the sudden an employee just came in to get something from their storage closet? well guess what...my privates weren’t covered and i was fully exposed. when we went to pay we found out we could book the hammam without the massage which we would...

I was really curious to try out this place as I’ve been to Korean spas (jjimjilbang) where you can get a body scrub done as well. Compared to a jjimjilbang, the gommage was a bit disappointing as it’s not very thorough and I still had some dead skin areas around my ankles and other areas that the person didn’t scrub. Also, something I really did not appreciate was that my husband and I were provided water in plastic bottles which was great at the beginning, but during the gommage I had asked if we could leave the waters outside in the area where the temperature is cooler, but the woman performing the gommage kept insisting we had to bring these plastic water bottles into the very hot steam room. We really didn’t want to be drinking water where the plastic was melting into our water and felt really uncomfortable but she was so insistent that we ended up taking the waters into the steam room.

For the massage, both my husband and I felt they were really mediocre…but we realized that we’re paying for the overall experience of the gommage and relaxing atmosphere. My husband said his masseuse was super friendly but didnt provide that great of a massage (eg: they don’t get your knots out and it’s more of just a relaxing massage.)

For my massage, I had Anna and she was really friendly at first. When I mentioned that I only want to focus on my back and the back of my calves, she didn’t say anything back which made me feel like she wasn’t happy with the request… then at one point, when I felt that she was just stroking my back I asked if she could use a bit more pressure and she literally said “no I can’t”. I’ve never heard that from a masseuse before.

Front staff was really friendly and overall a nice, relaxing and clean atmosphere. Good for a cold winter day but probably won’t be coming back.

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Edit: Updating my overall review rating as the owner called me to sincerely apologize for the experience. Really appreciated the follow up and this goes to show how much they care about and value their customer’s experience here. Looking forward to giving this place another try...