Hotel Business Review

Ms. Clarke

Spas, Health & Fitness

Wellness and Pampering in Spas

By Jacqueline Clarke, Research Director, Diagonal Reports

The "worried well" boost demand for spa wellness and pampering.

Manual massages and water therapies are the most popular wellness treatments but there are barriers to entering this market.

Diagonal Reports research reveals that strong demand for spa wellness and pampering treatments will continue because spa users perceive associated health benefits. They regard pampering as a preventative health measure. Wellness benefits are valued and, therefore, not classified as expendable luxuries to be trimmed with the first spending cuts. Spa users consider that a massage counteracts the negative health outcomes of current lifestyles, whether lowering blood pressure or relieving work-related strain injuries.

Some spa treatments are a "gentle fitness" regime or passive exercise. Consumers are required to expend little to no effort / commitment to lose weight, compared to more traditional exercise and diet regimes.

Unsurprisingly, massages generate the most spa visits and account for most spa business in value terms. Massage are primarily in demand for relaxing but there also can be a beauty element involved. Manual massages dominate in the premium or top-end of the spa market. But due to associated high labor costs, there are attempts to replicate the manual massage effect by mechanical means. Water facilities are also a big attraction for wellness and pampering clients but, again, these are limited due to the space required and costs associated with their installation and maintenance.

Pampering rituals define the spa experience. Indeed, it is the spas' reputation for pampering busy, stressed consumers that was the catalyst for the explosion of the entire spa market in the past ten or more years.

While most spa treatments promise some element of pampering, the key pampering treatment is massage. Other top spa wellness and pampering treatments are water therapies, along with health oriented counselling on diet and exercise.

While spas generate revenues from range of seemingly disparate services, the top revenue generators in most spas are body massages, and beauty treatments for the face. The larger-sized spas offer the most extensive menus which feature not just massage and beauty but also water therapies, health and fitness, and sometimes even sports and alternative medicine.

As a rule of thumb, body massage is the top spa business in volume terms (that is, numbers of spas offering, and consumers using) and in value terms (that is, revenues generated). Most body massages are for relaxing, but body massage can have a beauty purpose (e.g. exfoliation, moisturise), or a body shaping purpose (e.g. slimming, combat cellulite).

Examples of massage therapies would include European (older and new such as Hot Stone, Chocolate) and Asian styles (e.g. Chi Yang, Thai, Indian, Shiatsu, Yoga-Massage, Kalari-Marma)

Spas can offer both manual and mechanical massages. However, it is the offer of manual massage therapies, along with selected high-tech massages, that distinguishes the upper end spas from the rest of the market. Manual massages are expensive because they are labour intensive. And involving as they do the human element, these treatments bring the individual touch that is such an important feature of any quality spa experience.

Outside of the upmarket spa market segment, massage is an increasingly mechanized treatment. That is spas, beauty salons and other businesses invest in equipment that replicates the manual element of a massage. Equipment includes baths fitted with jets to direct water to a particular body part to reproduce a manual massage. This equipment delivers an experience similar to a manual massage but at a lower cost.

It is hardly surprising that spas want to win sales in the large and fast growing massage market. As one example, in the USA this market is estimated at anything from US$4bn to US$11bn a year, with almost 20% of the visits paid to alternative healthcare providers for therapeutic massages. In the USA spas sampled by Diagonal Reports singled out the medical approval endorsement of massage as "good for health" as major driver of market growth.

However, some upmarket spas are concerned about the proliferation of massage, in particular of businesses and even individual that offer only mechanical massage. These businesses often use using simple tools that are indistinguishable from those sold to consumers for at home use. Examples would include a basin for a foot massage, or a chair for a shoulder or neck massage.

The upmarket spas worry that such businesses debase the massage market -- and push down prices. Consumers might not differentiate between a proper spa massage and the chairs found in the waiting areas of airports and department stores.

Water based treatments are another important wellness and pampering therapy in spas. They are a significant revenue source, but only in the larger sized spas. This is because the installation of water facilities requires significant physical and financial resources, that is, space and the money to install and maintain baths and pools.

Examples of the types of water facilities would include baths, pools (plunge, whirlpools), saunas (Finnish, Bio sauna, with laconium, tepidarium, caldarium) and ice grottos.

There are many combinations and permutations of combinations of the different massage and water treatment. As one example is the treatment known as the Vichy Shower, basically a water-based body massage.

Water facilities can range from baths to large pools for lounging, or active exercise/fitness or even rehabilitation. An example of water fitness is where clients swim against a mechanically created current. Water treatments are growing in popularity with that large number of people -not just old, but also young-- who benefit from low stress therapies that diminish any stress on the joints.

Spas competitors in the water pampering market are the many other businesses that have installed water facilities, among which health and fitness clubs, sports centres, and community centres. The saturation availability of water facilities, particularly in units located in more affluent neighbourhoods, means that spas must work hard to attract consumers. Examples of successful strategies include the professional supervised water therapies, and during the winter indoor and heated facilities.

Spas in very different countries (such as the US, France and China) assure Diagonal Reports that they are confident that the current strong demand for their wellness and pampering treatments is not a bubble, and that demand will continue. The drivers of demand are an inter-related set of consumer motivations, the chief of which would include:

• Increasing health-awareness, that is, more and more people are aware that reaching certain wellness levels can greatly improve the quality of life.

• An awareness of the negative impact of lifestyles --short term and the long term-- on physical and mental well being

• Demographic trends such as the ageing baby boomers. The most affluent of the ageing baby boomers are the most health aware.

• The widespread desire to relax and to distress from sedentary but stressful jobs. Consumers and spa managers note strong demand for massage to cope with the effect on people of desk-bound and computer-bound days and hours.

Many managers and therapists identified as one of the "big selling points" of spa services is that larger numbers of consumers regard "pampering as a preventative health measure." By which they means that many spa clients see spa services not as mere self-indulgence, but as offering wellness benefits. For example when a massage reduces or counteracts the negative health outcomes (e,g., blood pressure) of stressful lifestyles.

Indeed many consumers are extremely receptive to other health claims. Among which that some spa treatments are a "gentle fitness" regime. These treatments include those that some spas promote as "passive exercise." That is "passive" because they involve the expenditure of little to no effort / commitment on the part of consumers, at least when compared to more traditional methods such as exercise and diet regimes. They can be described as do-it-for-me (DIFM) solutions, in contrast to do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions. Examples would include massages, manual and mechanical, along with innovation technology based solutions such as vibration machines.

The growing sales of pampering in spas is part of a shift seen even in the health and fitness sector towards less strenuous fitness. For example in the long term move from physical exercise to more gentle movement based fitness e.g. Pilates, etc.

Spas point to gendered attitudes to the willingness to use pampering treatments. Experts note that men are more open to talk of fitness than of pampering. Promoting the fitness element of different spa treatments is a selling point for men. That is spas sampled in France and the USA report that men clients who would never have considered a body massage will experiment with a body massage when "a fitness pay off" is promised. This is why spas use the term "sports massage."

Though spas offer wellness treatments, few spas are entitled to make any medical claims for these treatments. This makes these spas different from the traditional "cure" spas or health resorts, water spas, mineral spas, mud spas, climatic health resorts (fresh air), seaside resorts, hydrotherapy spa resorts, and the Kneipp hydrotherapy spa resorts.

The health resorts tend to utilise natural resources (water, minerals, mud, peat, sea water, springs) during a medically directed course of treatment. In some countries in Europe when treatments met certain criteria the costs were paid by insurance (social or private/public health). Among the top therapies recognized for insurance payment were rheumatology and respiratory system treatments.

The shrinking of the "prescription" base of the traditional health spa market, due to cutbacks in public and health insurance, is forcing the sector to look for new income sources. Some health resorts want to become significant players in the emerging health tourism market. In so doing they will compete with the newer spas and further alter consumers' understanding of what is spa wellness.

Research director of Diagonal Reports, Jacqueline Clarke has designed and developed the company’s professional beauty market research programme. She directs the Global Salon Panel (GSP) series which analyses and synthesises intelligence on the beauty and well-being markets. Ms. Clarke knows the global market and identifies and tracks key sector trends globally. Ms. Clarke's global expertise covers the largest beautycare/wellness markets worldwide, including the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia. She has worked with some of the largest beauty companies in the US and Europe. Ms. Clarke can be contacted at +353-4695-49027 or dreditor@eircom.net

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