Male or Female Massage Therapist? You Choose, and Here Is How to Ask

Can you ask for a male or a female massage therapist? Yes. Nghê Spa has both male and female therapists, and you can request either when you book. That is the whole of our policy, and this page does not add rules to it. It is also a question many people would rather not ask out loud, so here is the rest of the answer: why asking is ordinary, for women and for men; whether a man gives a firmer massage (the massage books say pressure comes from body weight and technique, not strength); what stays exactly the same whoever your therapist is; and the places in our actual booking flow where you can say it. We are Nghê Prana, a riverside hotel and spa on the Thu Bồn in Hội An, and the spa is open to visitors as well as hotel guests.

The short answer

Is it normal to ask for a male or female massage therapist?

Yes, and it is more common than the silence around it suggests. The one survey we found that asks the question directly is small: Munk and colleagues (BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 2020, vol. 20, article 213) surveyed 129 health-science undergraduates at one US university, 72% of them women. Thirty-seven per cent of the women strongly agreed that they preferred a massage therapist of their own sex, against 6% of the men; 38.9% of the men preferred a therapist of the opposite sex, against 2.1% of the women. Both sexes said they were comfortable with therapists of either sex, and, in the authors' words, "if given a choice, both prefer a female massage therapist." That is one group of students in one country, not travellers in Vietnam, so read it as a sign that the preference is common, not as a measure of how common.

There is a second reason the question can feel awkward: many people have never had to ask it. In the United States, 76.5% of the 183,000 people working as massage therapists in 2025 were women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Population Survey, 2025 annual averages). Someone whose every massage so far has been with a woman may only notice they have a preference when the answer could be different. Asking ahead is the simple way not to find out on the day.

Why do people prefer a male or a female therapist?

The reasons are personal, and none of them needs defending. Some of them: comfort and modesty, because being touched by a man or by a woman simply feels different to some people, whatever their own sex. Culture and faith, because in many families and religious traditions touch between the sexes outside the family is a line people keep, on holiday as much as at home. Habit, meaning the sex of the therapist they have always had. And an assumption about pressure, which gets its own section below. Carmen Renee Berry, in Is Your Body Trying to Tell You Something? (1997), gives the question its own heading, "Decide If You Want to Work with a Male or Female Massage or Body Worker", and writes: "Some people have very strong preferences, feeling comfortable being touched only by men or only by women. Follow your body's guide in this regard" (p. 142).

Berry adds that for anyone who has lived through abuse, the therapist's sex can matter a great deal, and not always in the same direction: some people feel safest with a therapist who is not the same sex as the person who hurt them, while others choose the same sex on purpose (p. 143). Her conclusion is the one we work to: the person on the table decides. Our booking form has no box for a reason, and a preference on its own is a complete request.

Does a male massage therapist give a stronger massage?

Not because he is a man. George Downing's The Massage Book (1972), written to teach beginners, is blunt about it: "Use your weight rather than your muscles to apply pressure. It is a fiction that you have to be physically powerful to do massage" (p. 28). Extra pressure, he goes on, comes from "leaning the weight of your upper body into your hands", not from straining the arms. The Book of Massage (Lidell and colleagues, 1984) says the same of shiatsu, where good technique means "using your body weight in a controlled but effortless way, rather than consciously 'pressing'" (p. 86). How much pressure a therapist can give comfortably depends on how they stand, lean and use their tools, and that is training.

The firmest treatment on our menu makes the point. The bamboo massage, which our menu describes as "firmer than hands", was developed by a woman: Nathalie Cecilia, who graduated from massage school in Sarasota, Florida, in 2004 and, with a high volume of clients "requesting deep pressure", began to feel pain in her hands, wrists and thumbs. Her answer was bamboo tools, not more strength, and the method took her two years to develop (Bamboo-Fusion).

So if firmness is the only reason you would ask for a man, ask for the firmness. The consultation form that opens right after you book online asks for your pressure in four steps, gentle, medium, strong and very strong, and has a body map: tap an area once to focus on it, twice to avoid it. You can also ask the therapist to change the pressure at any point. The firm end of our menu is the Thai massage and the bamboo massage, 570,000₫ for 60 minutes and 770,000₫ for 90, per person. If the sex of your therapist matters to you for other reasons as well, ask for both: the preference and the pressure are separate requests.

What stays the same whoever your therapist is

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Everything else. The therapists step out or turn away while you undress. For every oil massage, the hot stones, the herbal compress, the bamboo, the pregnancy treatment and the scrubs, your underwear stays on for the whole treatment and you lie under a towel; only the area being worked on is uncovered, one leg or the back, and it is covered again before the therapist moves on. Chest and groin stay covered at all times. That is house policy, confirmed with our spa team on 30 August 2026, and it applies to every guest, women and men alike. Nghê Prana is a licensed hotel spa and every treatment is therapeutic: there are no sexual services of any kind, and none will be offered or implied.

You can ask the therapist to change the pressure, skip an area, add covering or stop at any point. If you would rather not undress at all, the Thai massage without oil and the foot treatments are taken fully dressed. The details, treatment by treatment, are in what to wear to a massage, and the whole visit, step by step, in what to expect at a couples massage.

How do I ask for a male or female therapist?

• Online. The booking form has no tick box for it. Write it in the notes box under your details, the one that suggests "Pressure preference, allergies, pregnancy…". "Female therapist, please" or "male therapist, please" is enough. The note travels with your booking to the spa team, and the form asks for your email with the line "we'll confirm your therapist here".
• WhatsApp, Zalo or phone, +84 896 687 961. Put it in the same message as the date, the time and the treatment.
• At the spa. Walk-ins are welcome when a therapist is free; say it at the desk when you book.
• If you forgot. The consultation form that opens straight after an online booking ends with an "Anything else" box, or message us on WhatsApp with your booking.
• In Vietnamese, if it helps: kỹ thuật viên nữ is a female therapist, kỹ thuật viên nam a male one.

Booking for two

In our couples room you lie on two beds side by side, each with your own therapist, so each of you states your own preference. One of you can ask for a woman and the other for a man, or one of you can ask and the other not mind. Your treatments and pressures can differ too. Write both preferences in the booking note, or put both in your WhatsApp message, so nobody has to guess whose is whose. Two 60-minute oil massages side by side are 900,000₫ in total. Everything about the private room and the jacuzzi is on the couple spa in Hội An page.

What we have not printed yet

The owner's confirmation covers the two facts at the top of this page: we have both, and you can ask for either when you book. We have not yet printed how much notice a request needs, what happens if the therapist you asked for is not free at the time you want, or how a therapist is chosen when you say nothing. We have asked, and will add the answers here. Until then, if it matters to you, say so when you book and the spa will answer for your date. We would rather leave a line blank than guess.

Booking the rest of the visit? What to tell us first covers blood pressure, blood thinners and diabetes, and 60 or 90 minutes compares the two lengths price by price.