Should Saunas Be Social?

How the U.S. is riding a communal bathhouse wave and what it means.

Happy snow day to all who are celebrating! This frosty day seems like a good time to talk about saunas, don’t you think?

It’s no secret that the hottest trend in spas right now is the communal bathhouse, or social sauna. I wrote about communal wellness for Travel + Leisure’s October 2025 issue (see the online version here) with a specific focus on New York City, where it has blown up (there are more than a dozen bathhouses in the city with more on the way), but it’s trending all across the U.S., from Los Angeles (Teddy’s Hot House) to Chicago (Lost Language) to Boston (Moki Suana). For that story, I visited and spoke with several bathhouses and spas that have opened in NYC over the last few years that encourage guests to hang in the sauna together, experience a communal sound bath, and soak as a means of meeting people.