interview
Facilities at Thames Valley include eight treatment rooms, a thermal suite and a relaxation room
doing things differently So is there a secret of Mosaic’s success over the last 25 years? “Our philosophy from day one, when we were just operating health clubs, was first and foremost that everything we do is centred on performance. Our fees have always been based on us delivering results to our clients; we only make a profit if we make a profit for them, and that’s a really strong statement. “Secondly, with management contracts,
they’re not your facilities – you don’t control the investment purse and you can’t guarantee that you’ll always have the sexiest facilities in town. We’ve therefore always set out to have the friendliest facilities in town, and we’ve worked really hard with our recruitment and our customer care programmes and training to achieve that. “And with the spas, because I didn’t have
a background in spa as I did in fi tness, I’ve been able to approach it from a consumer perspective. When we were looking to launch Imagine, my wife and I toured the country visiting spas and writing down everything that irritated us. For example, we didn’t like the fact that, when you call to book a spa appointment, you have to tell them what treatment you want – if I’m going out for dinner on Friday, I’ll book a table but I don’t want to have to choose all my courses in advance. I want to choose what I feel like on the day. “Then there were the treatment
menus, which were too long and confusing. Especially as a bloke, I felt
32
EVERYTHING WE DO IS CENTRED ON PERFORMANCE. OUR FEES ARE BASED ON DELIVERING RESULTS TO OUR CLIENTS
out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know what half the treatments were. “So at Imagine, people book spa time,
not a treatment – we have a simplifi ed menu of 25 treatments and all our therapists can do all of them. “We’ve also approached the pricing
very differently. You pay a fi xed amount of money which gets you a set amount of time in the spa and a set amount of treatment time with the therapist. You can then choose anything off the menu, even the most expensive items. The difference in product cost is pretty marginal – the main cost is the therapist, and they’re paid the same whatever treatment they do. “So people pick a package – £49 for
a half-day experience, for example, including a 30-minute treatment – and choose what they feel like on the day, after a consultation with their spa host. “But in fact average spend has
increased: once people are in the spa and enjoying the facilities, because they feel they’re getting cracking value for money, there’s more of a chance to upsell an additional treatment.” So is revenue per guest one of the
main KPIs for Mosaic? “The key thing for a hotel is that the spa should generate
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a profi t in its own right, irrespective of any sale of hotel bedrooms off the back of it being there. There’s a surprising number of award-winning, trophy spas out there that don’t achieve that. “After that, we look at therapist
occupancy, revenue per guest and revenue per therapist hour worked. That’s a critical one, as a spa can have good therapist occupancy but still lose money – something many spas don’t consider. “Another classic comment relates to
retail:treatment ratios. Everyone will tell you it should be 10–15 per cent, but actually it depends what sort of spa offering you have. Retail:treatment ratios can vary signifi cantly, depending not only on the therapist’s sales skills but also on the treatment that’s been given – it’s much easier to retail after a facial than after a massage – and the spa setting. In some cases our ratio might be 5 per cent, and for the spa type I’ll be quite happy; in others we’ll hit 12 or 13 per cent, but I know we could get it to 18 or 19 per cent. “I think that’s one of the challenges of
the spa industry: it’s an embryonic sector and things pass into myth and folklore as they did in health clubs 20 years ago, without being questioned. Spa is actually far more complex than people realise,
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