Ms. Minton

Spas, Health & Fitness

Your Hotel Spa is a Profit Center

By Melinda Minton, Founder, The Spa Association / Spa Secure

My husband and I recently trekked out to Chicago where my association, The Spa Association (SPAA), was hosting a spa track at a convention. As we were packing I noticed that he wasn't packing work out gear. He simply commented that amenities like fitness areas and spas were never great at hotels so why bother. These two vignettes absolutely speak volumes on how to serve guests-give them the little extras. Give them more than they expect. Your spa can help you do that!

What's Your Theme?

The theme of your hotel should match the theme of your spa and that theme should consistently run through every element of the guest's experience. The theme that you choose for your hotel or spa addition might have to do with your geographical area. It might also have to do with the type of emphasis on theme experienced in your restaurant. Themes are also successfully built on things like historical era, international or cultural schemes, experiential themes (think Disney). That theme needs to be tied to your approach to customers, their experience in the spa and their experience in their rooms. Call the Paris hotel in Las Vegas and you will experience some of that-"Bonjour" as a greeting, for instance.

Your Spa Menu

The same feel of your theme should be represented in your spa menu. This means that if you are the Venetian you should be representing the Italian types of treatments and therapies. If you are, on the other hand, a Greco-Roman spa, the Roman bath themed modalities are the track you should be on. Your menu should evoke the feel of your theme as well as the represent the theme of your hotel. When creating your menu keep "passive treatments" in mind as profit builders. Passive treatments are those services requiring little or no attention by your spa technicians. Things like hydrotherapy, Vichy showers, oxygen bars, steam rooms and dry saunas are all amenities that you can either offer for free as a perk or that can be built in to other services as packages. While hydrotherapy bath might go for $45 for 20 minutes your product and labor costs to offer such a service are almost non-existent. Furthermore, throwing in a service like a eucalyptus steam will allow you to get more money from your core services and will add a flare of professionalism and extravagance to your overall offerings.

Presence in your Hotel

Don't think that just having a spa in your hotel will be enough to market the facility to your guests. Your spa is a part of your hotel and just like any loved family member, needs to be present everywhere the guest goes during their stay. Have your "on hold" message system mention spa features and promotions. Entice the guest into visiting your spa with luscious descriptions of relaxing pleasures offered at your spa. Have spa information present at the front desk and tuck marketing pieces into the room key cardholder. Have a spa menu selection in your restaurant and advertise the most popular spa services within your menu. Market to both your local market and your in-house guests. Your spa is a resource for profit. Don't take that lightly. Place information about your spa in absolutely every ad and publicity campaign that you participate in. You can't avoid your spa and expect it to be profitable. It needs to be advertised, celebrated and promoted just as much as your hotel.

Presence in the Room

To a great extent your guests judge the hotel by their in-room experience. I have stayed at many hotels with opulent entryways and beautiful lobbies. The same hotels have many times had plain, small, dirty, uncomfortable, dank rooms. I'm not sleeping in the lobby; I'm sleeping in the room!

One way to perk up the guest's experience is to truly extend a little hospitality and share some spa perks with them in their room. This can be as extravagant as making every shower a steam shower or having Swiss showers in every room. If you don't want to go quite to that extent, try offering a private labeled line with your hotel's signature on the label. Add some exotic elements to the typical bathroom fare that hotels offer. For instance, make your soap a multi grained soap or a scrub. Throw in a loofah or specialty sponge (they go for around .15). Add a tea candle (again you are looking at cents). These little special touches make such a big difference to the guest and they cost the hotel very little in overhead.

Put a little note on the pillow of each guest with their chocolate that suggests a massage before bed. Offer spa services on the breakfast hang tab so the guest doesn't need to lift a finger to secure an appointment for the next day. Advertise your spa on the room's TV. Have a presence in the room!

Having a spa in your hotel can be enormously profitable if you simply explore all of the options out there for recruiting and keeping clients. Your spa is not a problem unless you ignore it. Your spa is a profit center.

Melinda Minton is a spa consultant and health and beauty expert with offices in Scottsdale, New York City, and Denver. Ms. Minton is a certified massage therapist, esthetician and cosmetologist with an MBA in marketing. Ms. Minton is also a member of the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) and of Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW). Ms. Minton is the founder of The Spa Association (SPAA), a world-class organization dedicated to enriching the professional beauty industry through self-regulation, education and sound business practices. SPAA is the largest spa association in North America. Ms. Minton can be contacted at 970-218-5414 or melinda@spaminton.com Extended Bio...

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