SUMMIT REVIEW: GSWS
Co-chair Philippe Bourguignon
Set up online ‘check-ins’ and your Pinterest pages said Google’s Ted Souder
“Anecdotally, operators have said they’re not only beating budget, but are actually reporting the best months they’ve ever had”
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS T e third day of the summit was focused back on the industry where – once again – much- needed key data and research was released. For the fi rst quarter of 2012, luxury hotels
in the US sold more rooms (6.75 million) than ever before, announced Jan Freitag, senior VP of operations at hospitality bench- marking fi rm Smith Travel Research, who also said that this could be a lead indicator for where the hotel spa industry is headed. In addition, hotels are seeing a resurgence
of corporate and high-end leisure travellers which bodes well for ancillary spend in F&B, leisure activities and spa. But the numbers aren’t there yet. Average treatment room rev- enue from 2009-11 sat between us$136-137 (€111-112, £87-88), compared with the peak of us$146 (€119, £93) in 2007. T is value ero- sion may have been heavily infl uenced by the arrival of fl ash deals like those by Groupon, said Freitag. Treatment room occupancy rates were also at a low of 26 per cent in January 2011, compared with 33 per cent in January 2007 and Freitag’s advice was to “question the number of employees in your workforce and your opening hour metrics”. On the back of PKF’s 2012 Trends in the
Hotel Spa Industry report (see sb12/2 p44), the company’s vice president, Andrea Foster, plotted change in luxury hotel spa demand in the US against Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In an economic downturn, she said,
spa demand could be compared to self- actualisation – higher level needs which are typically only fulfi lled once the basics have been taken care of – while hotel rooms and F&B could be compared to shelter and sustenance which are more fundamental, necessary, requirements. With recovery happening in hotel
room and F&B income, she predicts spas will follow suit, saying: “Aſt er sev- eral years of decreasing revenues, hotel spas saw increases in 2011 and [operators] have anecdotally said they’re not only beating budget this year, but are reporting the best months their spas have had when compared to the same months in previous years.”
SPA EDUCATION The key piece of research unveiled at the summit – Spa Management Work- force & Education: Addressing Marketing Gaps – focuses on the state of global spa management training. Conducted by SRI International and commissioned by the GSWS, the report takes stock of manage- ment training worldwide, reveals where it’s failing and suggests improvements. SRI’s senior economist, Katherine Johnston, pre- sented fi ndings which showed that there are 130,000-180,000 spa managers and direc- tors in the global industry and only 4,000 students on management degree courses which vary widely and which operators don’t
56 Read Spa Business online
spabusiness.com / digital
Dr Elissa Epel – an expert in telomere health
really feel meet their needs (see sb12/2 p38). In future, SRI suggests spa businesses and operators need to collaborate more closely with training providers and organisations to
ensure courses deliver what’s needed. ● See p60 for the Spa Business investigation into global spa management training.
HEALTHY WAYS T e importance of health (and wellness), illness prevention and the role spas might play in relation to this important work was a topic that dominated many presentations and discussions over the three days. Dr Elissa Epel, associate professor at
the University of California, San Fran- cisco, captured delegates’ attention with her presentation on telomeres – a field that’s galvanised medical interest since being the focus of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Telomeres are caps at the end of chromosomes that protect them from dete- riorating and are an important marker of age-related disease risk. Exciting research
SPA BUSINESS 3 2012 © Cybertrek 2012
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