Soapy is the bathhouse technique carried in lather and warm water in place of gel, spent largely in the shower, softer in pressure than nuru, and priced on the same ladder.
Soapy is the name of a technique carried out in foam and running water instead of oil or gel. It comes from the same broad bathing culture as nuru, where to wash another person was a service in its own right, and it keeps that character: lather is worked up first and brought to the body, water returns at intervals to carry it off, and the cycle begins once more. Nuru belongs to the bed; soapy belongs, for the most part, to the bathroom.
The two are so often named together that a buyer may assume one is simply a gentler version of the other. The real difference is the medium, and the medium governs nearly everything after it. Foam never lets a palm rest, so its weight is diffused and light, and the alternation of lather and warm rinsing keeps a body alert where gel would let it sink. Gel, by contrast, holds a steady film and invites weight. Soapy needs no waterproof cover, no warmed gel and no stripping of the bed; it asks only for a shower whose hot water can be relied on and a little floor space, which nearly every central hotel bathroom offers.
It tends to suit someone arriving off a long flight, or at the end of a long day, who wants the travel rinsed off before anything else happens, and anyone who finds deep pressure more of an effort than a rest. Sixty minutes is a whole booking here and not an abbreviated one, since there is so little to prepare. Guests who want more sometimes take ninety minutes or two hours and pair the lather with a second technique on the bed.
Soapy sits on the same ladder as nuru, starting at EUR 180 for sixty minutes, and the rules for deposits are identical. The soapy massage page has the details and the therapists who take it, and the guide to nuru, soapy and body-to-body helps with the choice between the three.