HOW TO ENGINEER YOUR SPA MENU TO BOOST BUSINESS

Kirsty MacCormick

Your spa services menu is the single most important selling tool for your entire spa operation. Of course it features beautiful images and enticing words but underneath it needs to be a well-designed, structured document that maximises your bottom line.

Your spa menu should represent your spa concept, style and philosophy. Is there a focus on wellbeing, authenticity or beauty services? Does the menu need to focus on health and results or are your guests coming for enjoyment, a great treatment and a glass of fizz?

When developing your menu, take into consideration your guest mix and what you need to sell as well as specific revenue streams. For each treatment, understand the associated range of costs and true profit margin to enable you to maximise the booking of high-margin services. Time is money in spa services and in a busy spa driving your yield through creating opportunities for upgrades and retail conversion is essential.

Kirsty MacCormick, Founder, The Spa Consultancy

Guide your guests

Your menu needs to cater to all types of guests: someone looking to reach a quick decision wants to find what they are looking for easily, while those who are yet to decide need to be offered descriptions that include accurate benefits and results that will be delivered to meet their expectations.

The length of treatments is also important to enable guests to schedule their stay and not end up running late.

For a typical spa operation without beauty services, separate treatments under categories that make them easy for the guest to find. If it’s too challenging they will get fed up or end up picking up the phone to ask questions. Generally speaking, I would recommend around 24 treatments categorised into massage, facial, wraps, scrubs and rituals.

Get smart in your operations

Look to use revenue management and dynamic availability techniques to maximise high-margin services at peak times, as this can have a dramatic impact on profitability. Consider the breakdown of your treatments to a price per minute and cost of delivery (ie. the products used). This is always surprising as usually we think of our longer, more expensive treatments as the most profitable when in fact it’s the shorter, simpler treatments that will bring the highest profit.

Annual performance audit

Each year, I would recommend spas undertake a menu engineering exercise. Break down the spa’s performance – peak and off-peak hours, daily, weekly, monthly and seasonally. Examine if the menu worked for you and see if you managed to maximise higher-margin treatments at peak times. Look at the performance of each treatment – are you keeping a service that didn’t sell, and do you have product sitting unused on your shelf? Is there something missing from your menu, or do you need to get clever with seasonal and off-peak promotions?

Almost universally, the most popular service is massage, it’s also the most profitable at around two per cent cost-of-product. Having add-on services, such as hot stones or an

LED mask, available for your therapists to upgrade to will provide incremental revenue that is almost all margin. This also keeps the therapist engaged in the overall guest experience.

Make the experience easy

These days we all want to drive guests to book online as this makes it easier and faster to book and cuts down the number of calls made to the property. When structuring your menu take this into consideration and decide what information you need to provide to enable the guest to book without calling. Some guests like to browse through the menu so having a downloadable menu is usually a good idea.

Always include your opening hours, facilities, spa policy, cancellation policy, contact details, information on how to spa and what to bring with you, and also information on the products and brands used.

Once your menu draft has been created, share it with others, especially those not used to visiting a spa. You may love the way it’s been written but it might not be practical for the non-spa user. Your menu, once completed, should be displayed and easily available in the spa café, locker room, waiting room and relaxation room, and if in a hotel displayed in the guest rooms.

Spa menus can be found in all shapes and sizes but they are the first impression of a spa, whether online or in-house, and they can be a deciding factor in whether the guest will book or not.

The pathway to profit

How to engineer your treatment menu for the best business results

• Consider your target audience and guest mix, and highlight services you want to sell more of. n Don’t make it too complicated or have too many services as this demands too many choices. n Make sure you have contact details and policy information in an easy to find area.

• If you want to drive online bookings, ensure you don’t have services that have unanswered questions as your guests will only end up calling you. n Offer add-on services as these are an opportunity for staff to upgrade and create higher margins.

• Refresh your menu annually, analyse what’s selling and what’s not, and decide what you want to focus on.

www.thespaconsultancy.com

With over 30 years’ experience in the spa and wellness industry, Kirsty MacCormick is the founder of The Spa Consultancy. Her expertise includes development, pre-opening project management and operational set up of a range of spas from commercial hotel and day spas to luxury five-star hotels and wellness destinations.