Experience A Blissful ' New Day' In The Wellness Rooms At The Dagny Hotel In Boston

Forbes

26-04-2025

Ready to get away from it all — and restore your spirit? Boston's Dagny Hotel features beautiful new Wellness Rooms to seduce you into self-soothing that obviates the travails of travel.
The Dagny
Well, well, well.
These words are always used to emphasize a point or to prepare the listener for an important statement. So here it comes. 'Well' is big actual buzzword for 2025, and I'm happy to tell you about the new Wellness Rooms at the AAA Four-Diamond Dagny Hotel in Boston. In fact, the word 'Dagny' comes the old Norse word for 'new day,' and you are sure to have a health-inducing, calming, restful, vagus-nerve relaxing, recharging, restorative respite when you rendezvous in one of these new rooms.
The luxury-laden Dagny officially began welcoming guests in August 2023 after a multi-million-dollar renovation. Located in the Financial District, sort of 'at the corner of work and play,' the hotel caters to business travelers and features a beautiful gold lentil-shaped (biconvex) mural painted onto the ceiling at the entrance, showing Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. If you are carrying that kind of burden too – or even a smidgen of that – the Wellness Rooms here are just the ticket to healthy transformation.
Atlas carrying the weight of the world — that's the mural on the ceiling at the Dagny entrance — and this is just the place to unload and unwind, thanks to its new Wellness Rooms.
The Dagny
Last year the Dagny introduced dedicated Wellness Rooms and I just stayed in one. Quite impressively, these luxury rooms feature a private Peloton bike plus a TechnoGym bench that includes a foam yoga mat (which I found to be a little too small), elastic resistance bands, dumbbells and knuckle weights, and instructions on how to use them all. Then come the complimentary snacks including Culture Pop soda (18% juice in the flavor of Ginger/Lemon/Tumeric) plus a RX bar, a salted/sweet snack, and a 15% discount to a state-of-the-art medical spa just steps away – KDR MedSpa + Wellness Center, where you can enjoy a wealth of up-to-the-minute aesthetic services from Kathryn Russo, a Board-Certified nurse practitioner (more on this in a minute. Insider tip: If you plan on scheduling there, do it BEFORE your trip, as the clinic is quite busy.) The big bed was also dreamy, featuring 300-thread-count sheets and a Serta Perfect Sleeper Mattress. Blackout shades also ensure sleep-inducing slumber.
The Wellness Rooms also feature a Nespresso machine, a leather chaise and desk chair, a gorgeous Dyson hair dryer in a big black leather box, and Lockwood New York amenities. These posh products are made by Gilchrist and Soames, and the Number 23 body lotion for example, features shea butter, avocado oil, citronello and limonene. Its Number 24 handwash is also quite beautiful, in the flavor of rosemary geranium.
In fact, I used the rosemary-geranium after I booked a private in-room massage at the hotel, which was quite blissful and enhanced the wellness experience here even more. The massage therapist was excellent, and as it happened, told me she just loves to work on necks-and-shoulders – the very two areas where I had been carrying excessive stress. You can book through the concierge. (Very, very impressively, the hotel has one concierge who is a member of the prestigious Clefs D'Or association of five-star concierges at luxury hotels throughout the world.) You can also book a private in-room yoga session from the hotel's featured/resident yoga instructor, Christen. (Complimentary yoga classes are held every Thursday morning at 7AM for guests, as part of its Wellness Series.) Christen instructed me through my first-ever (and private) yoga class. (I typically do cardio and lift weights, but at age 69, I've got to find a gentler way). It was a remarkably insightful session, and she told me – which was quite unbeknownst to me – that 'Hips are your shock absorbers – they hold all of your grief, trauma, stress and stuck energy. Just opening up your hips will lower cortisol and release stress.'
This Wellness Room King Suite features leather furnishings, a Serta Perfect Sleeper Mattress, 300-thread-count sheets, and upscale bathroom amenities, plus a TechnoGym bench and Peloton bike.
The Dagny
A great insight. I opened my hips as I slept that night — you lie down, put the soles of your feet together, and turn out your knees into a diamond shape. Then I dozed into Dreamland.
I also brought my own self-soothers to the hotel, which are things I typically pack for every trip, to add as much joy to my journeys as possible: A satin pillowcase and eye mask; a cult-favorite Knesko Gemclinical-technology sheet mask for my face (I chose the Green Jade Calm Serum in 'I Am Grateful' that balances the heart chakra); Dr. Nigma Talib Super Vitamin C cocktail packets; and my favorite Marin Lip-Treatment balm, made in Maine, with marine glycoproteins to replenish the skin, in the flavor of delicious S'mores. (Yup, I am really into health, wellness, and a smorgasbord of self-soothing steps, because I typically find the travails of travel so very tiring.) I don't know if it was me, but I kept upping the heat because my room typically felt cold; a quick call to Maintenance solved the problem. The only other thing that I really missed was having a bathtub, because I really wanted to bring Epsom salts from home, so that the magnesium would relax my weary body even more.
The theme of wellness continues through the hotel. Wellness waters are offered, complimentary, from pitchers in the lobby (such as raspberry-lemon on the day I was there), and on Friday, the hotel provides complimentary 'refreshers' in the spring and summer, such as fruited lemonade. If you want something more spirited, the hotel frequently offers 'pop-ups,' and recently offered a whisky-tasting featuring, from Scotland, Oban Distillers and Johnnie Walker Blue, which was ENORMOUSLY popular, with similar events planned later this year. In the bar, I was told you could order the award-winning espresso martini. In the whimsical library featuring books by Boston-based authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, every Wednesday, you can enjoy 'checkers and chocolate' featuring goodies by Lindt in the colors of gold and navy.
The hotel has two restaurants that are quite noteworthy. Fin Point Oyster Bar & Grille (which is always crowded) offers super selections including roasted-mushroom flatbread, roasted-beet salad with pomegranate seeds, and the roasted salmon featuring baked acorn squash with black barley. (And healthy me, I try to eat 100 grams of protein a day, so I chose a double-order of just the salmon.)
The other restaurant, Tradesman, is enormously popular, especially in the morning, by all the business people in the area. Here, you will find great goodies including an especially delicious Mediterranean avocado-toast, along with all kinds of sandwiches, chia pudding, overnight oats, croissants in the remarkable flavors of red-velvet, Boston cream pie and tiramisu (my thighs opted out on those), and fresh-squeezed juices. (Less than a mile away is Boston's famous North End, where you can also indulge in great Italian food, and super-famous cannoli from Mike's Pastry.) After all that, it's good to know that you can step outside the hotel and jog. The Dagny is also close to beautiful running routes —including the waterfront along North End (less than half a mile away), the piers in Seaport (less than 0.5 away), and the Charles River Esplanade.
Up on the third floor is a great, 2000-sq-foot fitness center with all-new Peloton and TechnoGym equipment including a Smith machine, treadmills, ellipticals, kettlebells, a wealth of weights and assorted other equipment. Guests are just steps from the outdoor RKG outdoor workout classes in the summer, too. Last summer, Pilates-guru Jill Rothenberg taught classes there, before joining the Wellness Series for six months of hotel mat Pilates on Wednesdays.
After all that, it's really fun to enjoy a discounted pampering procedure steps away at the KDR MedSpa.
Wellness even continues outside the hotel, as The Dagny offers 15% discounts on aesthetic services just steps away at the upscale KDR MedSpa + Wellness Center.
KDR Med Spa
The Dagny, in keeping with current wellness trends, has partnered – quite impressively – with Kathryn Russo, a leading, Board-Certified nurse practitioner in Boston, who is a master at facial aesthetics and impeccably trained in injectables. The hotel offers 15% discounts at her KDR MedSpa + Wellness Center to all of its guests. Ms. Russo told me that she had spent many years working with leukemia patients who were undergoing bone-marrow transplants, at among other prestigious institutions, Sloan-Kettering in New York and the Dana Farber in Boston. 'When you work in leukemia – it's the cowboys of medicine,' she said. 'You have to know about every organ in the body. Once you do that, you can go anywhere in medicine– 100%.' After that, she worked with an ocular-plastic surgeon. 'And that was it,' she emphasized. She opened her medical clinic/spa 16 years ago, and some of the insights that she told me were completely fascinating. 'The focus in aesthetics is to have it so that people will look at your best feature – whether it's your eyes – or your sexy lips.' And quite fascinatingly, she said that her Boston office, especially, has an extensive amount of men who visit for hormone replacement, and at that same office, she sees younger and younger women – many in their twenties – who come in for Baby Botox and more. At both of her locations (the other one being in Newton) she offers a wealth of state-of-the-art treatments including injectables and fillers, professional-grade peels, and probably the hottest thing in aesthetics right now, the Platelet-Rich Plasma Treatment (no not the vampire facial), especially under the eyes, to stimulate the production of collagen. It's no surprise to me that she told me that many, many Boston physicians are her patients. 'I love this field,' she told me, and it's obvious.
That The Dagny has this kind of beauty/feel-good partnership is very on-point. According to the Global Wellness Institute, wellness tourism is part of a massive, growing trend. The United States continues to lead the world as the largest wellness economy by far, boasting the largest markets in nine out of eleven wellness sectors – spanning physical activity, healthy eating, mental wellness, beauty and personal care, wellness tourism, wellness real estate, and more.
(Similarly, and also very interesting, for example, One&Only Palmilla, the iconic ultra-luxury resort in Los Cabos, is now partnering with prestigious global skincare brand Dr. Barbara Sturm to craft its own wellness program bringing her advanced therapies and personalized treatments to Mexico for the first time. Utilizing Dr. Sturm's high-performance molecular ingredients, paired with the beauty brand's advanced-science skincare treatments, the One&Only Spa will offer guests a trio of facials designed to recharge, revitalize and rebalance skin, found only at One&Only Palmilla.)
Fido will also feel good, as The Dagny welcomes dogs and even offers a cushy plush bed.
The Dagny
And to make The Dagny all the more desirable for your Boston travels – it is canine- friendly. So you can bring your pooch and sleep with him or her in that big, beautiful bed if you want. (And let's face it – isn't every dog a therapy dog?) The hotel offers a branded dog bowl, bed, and mat that comes with a $75 cleaning fee. Soon, there will even be treats from the special local Polkadog bakery in the Seaport.
So remember – Bring your Dog(ny) to the Dagny! Fido is sure to also have a feel-good getaway.
For more about my Wanderlust and Wellness travels, please Follow me on Instagram at @DebbiKickham.