London wellness studio MICRO by The Fix has taken over the courtyard and rooftop terrace of Cannes’ Hôtel Martinez for a three-week residency running from 1 to 20 August 2026, giving business travellers on the Côte d’Azur an early look at a brand that opens permanently in Chelsea this autumn.
For UK executives whose August diaries include the Riviera, whether for client entertaining, a conference or the increasingly common practice of bolting leisure days onto a work trip, the activation puts a structured wellbeing programme inside one of the few Cannes hotels that already functions as a business address. Sunrise beach sessions, sound healing and breathwork run alongside the hotel’s normal meetings and events operation, so delegates can build recovery into a working week rather than around it.
MICRO was founded by Loulwa Alkhawaja on the premise that modern wellness has become its own form of stress. Light, scent, sound and material are each engineered to settle the nervous system before the body moves, and that principle runs through the Cannes programme. It is a deliberate counterweight to a market where the pressure to optimise has turned wellbeing into another performance metric.
“August on the Riviera is a time when people naturally seek movement, restoration and moments of pause, yet so few experiences feel truly intentional,” says Alkhawaja. “For three weeks at Hôtel Martinez, we are bringing MICRO’s philosophy to Cannes through a carefully curated rhythm of movement, recovery and stillness.”
What the programme covers
At the centre of the residency sits the Lagree MicroFormer, a slow, low-impact but high-intensity method that anchors MICRO’s movement ethos. In Cannes it broadens into a fuller schedule of movement, sound healing and breathwork, designed as an immersive experience rather than a class you tick off.
Collaboration is a founding principle of the brand, and the line-up reflects it. Sessions are led by Sanctum and by WOZ, the community platform founded by Warren Whitley, with Elodie Meschi of Cannes Run Club, Jay Copley of Run That, and Pilates specialist Ashlea McKee, Marie Claire UK’s resident Pilates lead. Resonance Energy Wear is supplying mineral-infused performance and recovery apparel, while juices and elixirs from Kate Living, made with Natroceutics formulations, support guests through the programme.
Why the Martinez matters for corporate stays
The setting is not incidental. The Croisette property was recently designated the first Palace de France in Cannes, a distinction that places it at the top of the French hotel classification system and, in practical terms, at the top of most corporate booking wishlists for the region. It is part of The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, which matters for travellers consolidating loyalty spend across a managed programme.
Getting there in high season remains the harder problem. Road congestion between Nice and Cannes peaks in August, though the recent arrival of Uber Boat on the French Riviera has given travellers a coastal alternative to the motorway crawl.
A signal for the London market
Cannes is the first stop in what MICRO describes as an international activation series, each version shaped to its location and audience. It also previews the Chelsea site, where only 60 founding memberships will be released, by invitation only.
The commercial logic is not hard to follow. Wellness tourism spending reached $894 billion in 2024, growing 13.8% year on year, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Hotels have noticed, and wellbeing programming is now a standard feature of the luxury openings reshaping business travel rather than an add-on.
For UK business travellers the takeaway is narrow but useful. If you are in Cannes before 20 August, there is a serious wellbeing programme running at the Martinez, and it doubles as a preview of what Chelsea gets in the autumn.
