Since opening in 2003, the Serena Spa Institute in Mangalore, India, has trained more than 500 students, who are all guaranteed a job at one of the facilities within the Serena Spa portfolio on completion of their studies
Only two years later, he had developed and was operating nine resort-based spas under the Serena Spa brand – seven in the Mal- dives and two in Sri Lanka. During a visit to a potential new property
in Kerala, India, Hougaard met Sabrina. She was a guest at the resort and he discovered her background was in human resources and training. Sabrina recalls: “Jesper asked me to put together a course for his therapists that would include specifi c technical treatment training. He also invited me to the Maldives to see the way the spas were run.” Eighteen months later, Hougaard asked
Sabrina to marry him and she agreed, on one condition. “I didn’t want to leave the place I was born because I wanted to look aſt er my elderly parents. I told him I couldn’t marry him unless he moved to Mangalore.” Today, their head offi ce and training institute is still based in the 101-year-old house her father was born in.
A CREDIBLE CAREER Professionally, Sabrina complemented Hou- gaard well. While his role was – and still is – negotiating new contracts and looking aſt er the fi nances, hers was to fi nd staff and provide
SPA BUSINESS 4 2010 ©Cybertrek 2010
them with training. Recruitment was a par- ticular challenge she says: “Because Jesper was off ering an authentic Indian experience, he didn’t want T ai or Balinese therapists, he wanted Indian ones”. However, fi nding spa therapists in India is a struggle. “T e spa industry still has a huge stigma in
India,” says Sabrina. “Typically, a therapist is a rural girl who has come into urban India. Many of them lie to their parents about their job because their families assume it is not an honourable profession.” To overcome this, the Hougaards set up
their own training centre in Mangalore, to off er students a credible career. T e Serena Spa Institute off ers training courses of three to six months duration, with a guaranteed job in one of Serena Spas at the end. Since its opening in 2003, the academy has trained over 500 students. Sabrina does a lot of the training her-
self – creating a career for her therapists is her passion and she loves learning new spa modalities. Alongside her, the institute employs up to four teachers, as well as doc- tors and physiotherapists to teach subjects such as anatomy, dermatology, hydrotherapy and guest relations in order to obtain their
“T e spa industry still has a huge stigma in India. Many therapists lie to their parents about their jobs as their families assume it is not an honorable profession”
certifi cate in spa therapy. T en, students are trained in specifi c treatments and massages off ered at Serena Spas. A warm, motherly fi gure, Sabrina admits
her role is not just as director of operations. More oſt en than not, she says she plays the role of confi dante and regularly helps out any of the 135 staff members having rela- tionship or family troubles.
THE PERFECT PARTNERSHIP Hougaard says his time is taken up look- ing aſt er the company’s relationships with resort partners. T ere are now 14 spas under the Serena Spa umbrella (see p32) and each partnership works the same way, based on a basic revenue sharing model. “We get a
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