Ms. Olsen

Spas, Health & Fitness

What Your Spa Manager Should and Must Know

By Casey Olsen, Owner, Spa Sources

The health spa department of your property is a viable and a generous revenue producing outlet. Often, when searching for a manager for this area we tend to think that someone with general people skills is adequate to operate your spa facility. It is a mistake to regard your spa as an afterthought, since it can be the most active area of the hotel with the most concentrated daily usage by your guests. When you think about it, guests are mostly sleeping when they are in the hotel rooms, when using the restaurants they may linger a bit, but typically their length of time occupying a table is from 45 - 90 minutes. Most guests that use the spa are normally in the facility between 2 and 6 hours each day. This points out the importance of having a Spa Manager that is well trained, seasoned, adept with staff and the public. She/He must understand all the nuances to guest service and be continually vigilant for potentially liable scenarios which are many within a spa setting.

When I am on a project and the time comes to recruit and hire the staff a few months before the actual opening of the new spa, my primary focus is initially on the manager. This person needs to be unique in many ways. Often, it is recommended to me to hire someone who has worked in other areas of the hotel but has little or no experience in a spa. I have taken individuals that have no spa experience and trained them from scratch, however, the length of time it takes for them to grasp what being a spa manager really entails is great.

Let's take a close look at some of the duties of a spa manager.

Staffing - Staff needs in a spa are Receptionists, Technicians (work inside the spa facility), Estheticians, Massage Therapists, Fitness, Retail and sometimes Laundry personnel.

The Receptionists must have decent computer skills to deal with all the accounting and computer needs of the spa. They also must have a flair for sales from both the stand point of retail and up selling the spa services. They must also be reliable and possess a telephone presence and politeness to all who enter or call the spa.

The Technicians (some refer to them as Attendants, which I feel is a bit demeaning) are the staff that works directly inside the spa in constant contact with the guest. They must be willing to handle manual labor under stressful circumstances and possess a constant cheerful attitude.

The Estheticians are the staff that gives the facials and some of the body therapies. A manager cannot tell if the esthetician they are considering is qualified simply by seeing their licenses, but the manager must have had extensive experience in skin care in order to determine the applicants' ability, or lack thereof. This staff actually treats the skin of your guest and the esthetician doing this must be the best at this to prevent accidents or mishaps that could result in law suits.

The Massage Therapists are also licensed and well schooled but there is a wide variety of techniques and attitudes that come with each therapist. Your manager should be able to tell if the therapist is qualified within seconds of receiving an actual massage from this applicant. If your manager has no experience in this arena, then you are taking a big risk in hiring someone that might offend or even injure a guest while receiving a massage from a substandard therapist. And believe me, there are many out there.

The Fitness staff is also vital to your facility. They guide and monitor your guests while using the potentially dangerous equipment, which every hotel must now have. Your manager must recognize the abilities of their fitness staff and impart the seriousness of their diligence while assisting the hotel guest.

When your manager screens, interviews and hires some of the aforementioned staff, they must have an extensive understanding of all of these areas and be able to discern quality from ineptness. If your manager has little or no experience in these areas it may be only a matter of time before incidents occur, frankly because the manager is unable to recognize their potential for occurrence.

All too often spa managers that do not have said experience have other staff members get facials or massages from new recruits and then have the existing employee critique their performance. Using existing staff to determine future equal of status new staff is a really dangerous concept. Only by having your spa manager actually get a facial or massage from the applicant and challenging them throughout the treatment, as a guest will do, can a manager determine their true qualifications. Can this therapist with stand picky, sometimes challenging guest that are well versed in spa treatments, as most are today? Does the therapist think so highly of their own abilities that they can't receive direction from their client and possibly react inappropriately, thus causing a disgruntled guest that the manager must now contend with?

Following this thought, what about the disgruntled guest? Is your manager able to discern between the guest that is the chronic complainer looking for a quick credit or a guest that has a legitimate complaint. Is the manager adept at handling complaints efficiently and able to "turn" that complaining individual into a fan of the spa, without "giving the spa away?" By that I mean, can they handle complaints or do they just quickly credit services back as to avoid a confrontation? This ability can take years to fine tune, but if a spa manager has the basic ability to work with people, then cultivating this will not be a challenge.

We all know that the front line staff really determines the success or failure of any part of your hotel property. Motivating staff to perform to their peak comes directly from the spa manager. It is a very difficult job, working within a spa and often spa staff have hundreds of guests each day coming in and out and all expecting to be pampered and paid close attention to. Delivering this service takes dedicated, patient and reliable employees that are supported and encouraged, but not too pampered themselves. The spa manager determines this barometer. If complaints are flowing from guests and spa staff, then you must look to the manager. In all my years of managing large resort spas, my most important focus was on the staff. They knew that they could always come to me for anything. My accessibility was key to them feeling like they had my support. Often disagreements would arise among the staff themselves and we always worked them out. I called my staff my family and we all looked at each other in this light. There was sometimes a sour apple that might want to disrupt our supportive family and we saw to it that this apple would soon be picked from our family tree. By encouraging this kind of atmosphere, we all enjoyed our jobs every day, supported each other and when it came time for me to ask them to "go to the wall" meaning, work extra hard for maybe extra hours, they would never fail me.

So, when determining the caliber of your spa manager, take a few of these tips to heart. There are many more aspects of being a spa manager that go unnoticed every day, but if you can find someone that possesses some of the abilities outlined within this brief article, you are well on your way to having a successful and less contentious spa environment. And as we all know, when the staff is happy, the guests are almost always happy and when the guest is happy they tell everyone about your property and more than likely will come back. Hopefully, they'll bring friends too which makes your hotel a full circle success.

Casey Olsen is the principal owner of Spa Sources, a comprehensive health spa consulting firm. With 23 years of Spa Design and Review, Management, Staffing, Marketing, Budgets and Forecasts, Complete Spa Operation Set-up, Liability Guidance, Accounting, Equipment and Product Identification, Spa Sources provides comprehensive assistance in the creation of new, and the renewal of existing spa facilities. As one of the industry's foremost health spa consultants, Ms. Olsen provides invaluable guidance to developers planning their luxury resorts that include a health spa facility. Ms. Olsen can be contacted at 760 341-3311 or spasources@earthlink.net Extended Bio...

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