OPINION E
ach spa needs a menu wi th descriptions and photos that cap-
JUDITH SINGER
ture its DNA. However, more is not better – long treat- ment menus can be hard on the staff as there are too many procedures, products and retail items to learn; fi nancially draining due to the professional and retail inventory and training; and a hardship on the facility because of storage space required. Guests get too stressed reading ‘an ency-
President and co-founder, Health Fitness Dynamics Inc (HFD Spa)
It would be interesting to see if a spa would be gutsy enough to take this approach. T at said, there needs to be some variety
clopedia of worldwide treatments’ and research consistently shows that they typi- cally only go for the basic four – massages, facials, manicures and pedicures. In this case, it may be better to be ser-
vice-orientated than quantity-orientated. Rather than over-complicate a menu and list variations on facials, massages etc, a service provider could off er the basic four at 30, 60 and 90-minute segments at a fl at rate. T is would empower the therapists to use whatever techniques they feel nec- essary to personalise the treatment, rather than restrict them to a step-by-step process.
and operators could add more bath and body services. It’s good to also off er packages – a mix of themed and customised ones (where guests can select a certain number of treat- ments for a fi xed fee) – as long as operators don’t fall into the trap of thinking the more they off er, the more marketable they are. We think it’s better not to start the menu
with the most popular treatment because guests might not read the rest. Tell your story and concept and then describe the treatments and how they’ll be of benefi t. T ink about reversing the order by listing bath and body services, followed by mani- cures, pedicures, facials and massages. Cost analysis is important in menu engi- neering. T is should include the cost of
It would be interesting to see if a spa would be gutsy enough to offer the basic four services – massage, facial etc – at 30, 60 and 90-minute segments at a fl at rate
T
he days of most people having a high disposable income to pay a
MENU ENGINEERING
labour, products and con- sumable supplies as well as the desired profi t margin. T ere may be some loss leader treatments that a spa needs to off er because they are part of the con-
cept and the market wants them. Before fi nalising the price, the spa needs
to look at what competition is charging and its position in the market place. Mass mar- ket spas may be more focused on volume than profi t margins, whereas an up-scale spa might focus on fewer people paying more. If the spa director created the menu, he/
she may have a hard time making changes and while it’s nice to ask staff for feed- back, this is another point of subjectivity. It’s important to monitor what’s happening and make decisions based on reality – if the guests don’t want it, the staff don’t like it and it doesn’t make money, why off er it? Sometimes it can be fi nancially diffi cult
to make changes because of reprinting, website changes, too much existing stock and a small training budget. But if a spa doesn’t properly understand and analyse what it’s doing – and make adjustments – it may not be doing it for long.
HFD is a full-service spa advisory service that Singer co-founded in 1983 with the aim of helping to create marketable and profi ta- ble spas. Details:
www.hfdspa.com.
high price to visit a spa and pamper themselves at any cost are few and far between. T ere’s no doubt that we’re getting people
NOELLA GABRIEL Director of sales, product and treatment development, Elemis
through the door, but we’re now doing it at a lower price entry – where operators used to charge £85 (us$133, €102) for a ‘day spa pass’ to use facilities, they’re now asking for £45 (us$70, €54). So you can’t expect some- one who’s paying that to then spend £70+ (us$109, €84) on a facial. We supply to more than 1,200 spas world-
wide and we have found that these spas were full for usage of their general facilities, but that no one was booking treatments, which consequently had an impact on retail. In order to capitalise on these non-treat-
ment-spenders we decided against changing our existing treatment menu and instead to create a menu that entices the current non- spending spa-goer to spend a little at a time.
If you lower prices you’re devaluing your brand and it will be harder to charge that same amount in the future. So, back in Janu- ary 2010, I created an A La Carte style menu for those time and money conscious cus- tomers to sit alongside our existing off er in order to add extra choice. T is new menu consisted of a selection
of 16 high-performance facials, massages and hands and feet treatments; the major- ity of which last only 15 or 30 minutes. T ese bite-size treatments incorporate the best part of each full-length treatment – so only a brush up on skills is needed rather than full training – and two can be added together to create a package. T e prices range from £25-45 (us$39-70, €30-54) and we put great thought into this. From our personal experi-
28 Read Spa Business online
spabusiness.com / digital
ence, a comfortable spend is under £50 (us$78, €60). We’ve introduced this
menu to 25 per cent of our spa operators and it really has been successful – around 75 per cent of cus-
tomers have tried a treatment from it. It’s been revolutionary because we now have people booking 30-minute treatments and up-grading their spa experience, plus impor- tantly, we’re treating more guests per day which widens the opportunity for retail. Although some people can afford top
prices, they’re in the minority and our A La Carte menu bridges the gap by off ering more options to people who may then become repeat clients. It’s made a huge diff erence to our business. Spa operators can’t be precious if they want to survive the recession.
Gabriel’s been the driving force behind Elemis’ products and treatments since its launch in 1990. She took on the role of overseeing sales two years ago. Details:
www.elemis.com
SPA BUSINESS 1 2012 ©Cybertrek 2012
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