Guests at resorts in Thailand, Indonesia or the Maldives might stay a week or more to de-stress and improve their health habits. But most people today don't have the time or money, and instead are rejuvenating at day spas in the city. "The day spa packs that experience into as short a time as possible. You are making it part of your general routine," says Kirien Withers, editor of Dayspa Australasia, a Melbourne-based trade publication. Sng agrees: "Spas are no longer just for the rich and famous - they're also for the masses."
Four- and five-star hotels throughout Asia are installing spas to attract guests and boost revenues. But independent operators can easily open day spas in shopping centres, office districts and tourist destinations. "It's a good opportunity for entrepreneurs as the economy picks up again," says Sng, who owns an Asian chain of six spas called The Aspara.
But successful spa operators caution against trying to make a quick buck. Veteran hotel manager Tom Mockler, who runs three Hideaway spas on Phuket, says it takes time, experience, dedication and training to develop high-quality spa services that bring repeat visitors.
His firm offers spa franchises and also sells a line of spa products that entrepreneurs can use to set up their own spas - massage oils, candles, background music recordings and herbal teas. These will soon be available through an online spa shop.
There's no escaping it, the Internet is all-pervasive. Take the niche travel market. "The Net is the spur," says Douglas Thompson, director of a trio of specialised travel services in Bangkok. "It lets you identify a market and go out into it."
Thompson, a Californian, started about three years ago with a Web-based travel service called Utopia Tours that successfully targets an overlooked market segment - gay and lesbian travellers. The service provides hotels that welcome same-sex couples, and allows clients to discuss their travel needs and travelling companions with ease. "Malaysians and Singaporean gays don't have local travel agents they can talk to," Thompson says.
Building on that success, Thompson and his two business partners, American John Goss and Australian Robert Scoble, developed a mainstream service using the same quality hotels and licensed tour guides. "Mainstream travellers find that all the services we provide are appropriate to their needs as well. A guide is a guide, and ours are very good at what they do." Now they are catering to elite travellers with a six-star custom travel service called Orientalis.
Starting with the gay-and-lesbian market segment has proven to be an unexpected advantage. Because gay people tend to travel as couples or in small groups, they want a personalised and customised service. "We had to develop a better product because they are unforgiving. They don't travel in big groups, they want quality and complain easily. So once we honed the product for them, we find it's better than the average mainstream product." Soon, gay clients began asking Utopia to set up trips for their parents, and Tamarind Tours was born.
All three services focus on exclusive admissions and special services - visiting a Khmer palm reader on an island in the Mekong River, or seeing a special museum collection not yet open to the public. "The best tour companies find ways to make the customer feel he's getting a more exclusive product," Thompson says.
This is a lesson that Asia's fast-growing high-end coffee vendors know well. City-dwellers are becoming more discerning and demanding higher quality, coffee being no exception.
High-end cafes and kiosks are opening in shopping malls, convention centres, department stores, train stations, even hospitals. Most are standalone operations, but a few aspire to be national, even international chains. Still other outlets are doing a robust business roasting and selling local beans.
Would-be coffee entrepreneurs may wonder whether the coffee craze will run out of steam. But caffeine is an addictive substance, remember. And Asia's market appears far from saturated. "There's major room for growth," says Carmel Foley, regional marketing director for The Coffee Bean, an international chain that started in Southern California and now has 31 outlets in Singapore and 21 in Malaysia. "Coffee is not a new business or new industry, but it's never been presented here the way it has been in Australia, the US and Europe," Foley says. "Asia is catching up."
While it's the young and trendy set driving the coffee boom, the region's ageing population is providing opportunities in the services sector.
In Asia's most populous country, China, the over-60 population jumps 3.2% each year, while the birth rate lags behind at 1%.
The trend presents a daunting problem for state planners - but it offers an opportunity for companies ready to take advantage of the lopsided demographics. By 2020, the government will be caring for a smaller percentage of the country's estimated 230 million senior citizens, opening the way for private companies to step in.
While China may not be fully developed economically by then, there will still be tens of millions able to pay for private nursing homes. By 2020, people older than 60 will comprise 16% of the country's population. By 2050, a quarter of China's population, or 400 million people, will be over 60 years of age.
There are two main reasons for the tilting of traditional age-per-population ratios. Firstly, China's life expectancy is growing. And secondly, as the children in today's single-child families reach maturity they may not be as prepared, or as able, to look after their parents the same way multiple-child families looked after their parents in previous generations.
In the meantime there is a huge demand for more beds at both private and public institutions, a situation that is gradually opening the door for more foreign investment.
The civil-affairs bureau in Beijing has already drawn up rules on investment in old-age homes and tabled incentives to spur private development, including reductions on utility bills and lower tax rates. Statistics released by the National Committee on Ageing in 1998 show that in Beijing there was a need for almost 200,000 beds, but only 10,000 were available. Cheng Yong, head of the committee's research department, forecasts that state-run homes will cater to senior citizens who don't receive pensions; privately-run homes will take care of the rest, a situation which already applies in Western countries.
Another trend could boost opportunities in elderly care: Many Chinese who have emigrated abroad may find it cheaper, and more comfortable, to return to China for their retirement.
Asians are travelling more often these days, raising their awareness of trends in other parts of the world. Suppliers of organic food - produce grown without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilisers, and chemical-free meat and fish - have enjoyed a small, but steady, niche market in the US and Europe for more than two decades. Now, health-conscious Asians are craving organic food, too. But restaurants and grocers are having a hard time finding local suppliers to meet the growing demand.
At The Café in Hong Kong's plush Ritz-Carlton, chef Damien McManamon is keen to offer guests a selection of organic dishes. But a dearth of local suppliers forces him to buy almost exclusively from Australia.
"It's not easy to get things locally," McManamon says. "The organic farms here are not well known, and supplies are irregular. But I think it could be a good niche in the market if someone would get in there and start doing it professionally," he adds.
McManamon sources everything from baby zucchinis and carrots to Water Buffalo-milk yoghurt and mozzarella from certified organic farms Down Under. He buys through Hong Kong distributor Delicia, which was set up two years ago by fellow chefs Bruno Von Siebenthal and Jurg Plaser. Von Siebenthal says he would like to see the Hong Kong government encourage local farmers to grow organic produce, either by subsidising their operations or offering cheap land.
McManamon agrees: "It would definitely be cheaper to buy organic food here rather than from Australia - maybe 10-20% cheaper - but it's just not viable to buy organic food here at the moment." He says there is definitely a gap in the market, because five-star hotels are always looking for new sources of "clean food". People are so health-conscious at the moment, he adds, and Hong Kong is so susceptible to outside influences.
In Hong Kong's tony Mandarin Grill, chef de cuisine Wan Kwok Chung is also forced to source organic produce from outside the region: wild (organic) salmon from Ireland, chicken from France, vegetables from Australia. But he says the continual search for new channels of food for his organic menu is time-consuming and costly. While the Mandarin is able to buy small quantities of organic produce locally - including apples, papayas and bananas - the supply is uncertain.
Wan says he is sure that anyone willing to invest their time, energy and money in an organic farm in Hong Kong would have no trouble selling their produce. "Why would I buy elsewhere if I could buy here?" Wan says. "I wouldn't need to pay extra for the shipping and delivery." And most importantly, the dishes on his menu wouldn't be restricted by the availability of certain foods.
Wellcome supermarkets chain is also keen to see a steady local supply of organic produce. The chain's Hong Kong fresh-food director Henry Neilson says local people are becoming increasingly aware of the health and taste benefits of organic produce, but it has been difficult to source it locally.
Wellcome is introducing a range of organic produce to a select number of stores. It buys some vegetables from Kadoorie Farm in Hong Kong, but most produce - everything from pears to packaged salads - comes from Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Neilson says that were there a steady supply of good quality organic produce available locally, Wellcome would jump at the chance to buy it. He hopes some enterprising farmers across the Chinese border may take on the challenge.
Vicky Lau, manager of Produce Green, a non-profit educational organic farm in Hong Kong's New Territories, is enthusiastic about Hong Kongers' growing awareness of organic produce. She says each year, 30,000-40,000 visitors, mostly school groups, make the trek from the city to visit the farm, to learn more about the benefits of organic eating and to buy vegetables. The farm clocked up sales of HK$112,000 last year.
Lau says the high cost of transportation and the low crop volume prohibit the farm from selling to restaurants. But Lau considers produce sales to be a byproduct of the farm's main work - educating the public.
The desire for a more natural lifestyle - and an unlikely fillip from the Asian financial crisis - is also providing opportunities for Southeast Asia's traditional craftworkers.
When speculators attacked Asian currencies back in 1997, few would have thought they'd set off a fashion trend. But since the crisis, there has been a mini-boom in small Asian businesses making and selling handcrafted fashions and housewares.
Entrepreneurs suddenly found that cheaper Asian currencies helped them source more and better handmade goods for each US dollar of sales. Customers, meanwhile, rediscovered the good value in handcrafts. For the same price as mass-produced merchandise, they could get something handmade and unique.
The product range is as big as a weekend bazaar. There are traditional textiles like silk, cotton and batik; household items such as exotic furniture, baskets, wickerware and ceramics; and all kinds of decorative goods like table settings, pillowcases, handbags, lampshades and lacquerwork.
Vendors source products in places like Bali, India, Thailand and Vietnam, often working closely with small shops or groups of artisans to upgrade quality and adapt traditional designs to contemporary tastes. Many handicraft entrepreneurs are Westerners in Asia, or Asians who have lived abroad and are sensitive to international tastes and lifestyles.
The goods are being sold on the Internet, in Asian hotels and through chic boutiques. Houseware shows hawk these wares to the decorator trade and department-store buyers.
Handicrafts are a natural niche for small businesses, where small overheads make low volumes viable. Lukas Goh, curator of the Atelier Gallery, a gift and decor shop in Kuching, Malaysia, scours all of Asia to find unique merchandise for his customers.
"I have to constantly find new things. Lately I've been buying in Pakistan up near the Afghan border, and going to Rajastan, bringing in fabric and turning it into lampshades and cushion covers. It sells very well," he says.
William Warren, the Bangkok-based author of bestselling Thai Style, says quality and refinement are key. "There's more attention to doing superior crafts in the past few years, rather than all the junk they were doing in the eighties and nineties, mass-producing stuff that was sold in Wal-Mart and Macy's (the New York department store). It was pretty crummy," he says.
Wallee Leelawatanasuk, managing director of Senada, a Bangkok-based fashions firm with 50 employees, is tapping the Western demand for Oriental style. Senada has just launched a new womenswear line called the Montar and Kai Collection. It is made from traditional handwoven silk, cotton and hemp textiles from Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
Wallee is a new convert to Asian style. Her core brands established in 1991 - Senada and SND Sport - are both Western-style and contemporary. They've succeeded in Thailand, but have a harder time in export markets, where many brands have similar styling. Wallee's new line takes a different tack.
"I thought I should launch from our strength, the strength of traditional products that no other country has. Now my product is not comparable to anything in China or Hong Kong. If you value traditional products, you will come to me and you won't compare prices."
Kristina Zanic, a Bangkok-based interior designer from Australia, says that while Asian style is definitely "in", it sometimes has to be modified to suit Western tastes. "A lot of Asian things are a bit gaudy, so I try to tone them down, make them more tasteful for the home. It's the old saying, East meets West."
Zanic launched a home-decor line called Asian Motifs last year. She sells at special exhibits in Bangkok hotel lobbies as well as on the Web.
"People are looking for something with a bit of spark or pizzazz to highlight their home. Asian design is a bit more daring than Western styles."