Rethinking Your Spa Service Menus

Hi there, this is Lisa Starr from Wynne Business Spa Consulting and Education. We're coming out of COVID slowly, spas and salons are starting to reopen across the US, and it's time to start thinking about what your treatment menu should look like when you are given the go-ahead by your local authorities to reopen. It's an unfortunate timing I feel because spas were so busy, things were going great until they came grinding to a halt. And many clients have been impacted financially by this; they've lost their jobs or lost income or both. So, we need to be sensitive to that when we reopen.  

And I think it's a really good time to reevaluate the treatment menu that you have and make some tweaks. First of all, many of them are so long, you know, there are so many options and I think that right now we need simplification just to clear people's minds. You know not to have so many choices. So, think about your core principles and values and your branding, but maybe streamline it. Let's say you have a couple three, four facials, three, four massages on the menu, little bit of nail treatments, just not too many options.  

You have to think about timing because we're going to have to open with staggered use of rooms, staging of occupants, and I'll talk more about that in another video. But you're not going to have all the things that you're used to offering available at all times. So, simplifying it will make it easier for the guests to choose and you will control the timing. So, my consulting clients were talking about, you know, 60-minute services. If you've been doing 50-minute services, great. I wouldn't stop that but don't do 75 or 90, you know, keep it under the hour so you have time to turn that room. What we're seeing so far is that room turns are taking about 15 minutes longer for cleaning. So not an extraordinary amount, but you'll want to consider that as well.  

So, let's say you've got three or four facials three or four massages on the menu. Think about the purpose, you know the end-use that that person will feel and make sure you're connecting to that in your marketing materials. As I said, people are financially impacted, and they have to use discretionary income to visit spas, so they need to know that the results going to be really useful and good for them. Certainly, you want to promote any immunity-building components of your treatments, focus on the wellness aspect in those marketing materials, and let's think about retail as well.  

There are lots of different messages coming from retail and authorities about how that will work. Certainly, there's no testers out but this is a good time to package retail perhaps with a treatment. Maybe with each facial or massage, you send them home with a full-size retail item that's been cleaned and sanitized before given to them, that's related to the homecare recommended for that treatment and price it in obviously, at minimum, at wholesale so that you recover your costs, but that they go home with something perhaps a little extra that they didn't expect. 

This is also a great time to think about add-ons. You know, if you've been doing add-ons or enhancements, then you might just roll one out, you know, include it with a treatment, time permitting, not an extra fee, but get people used to it. And again, it's a thank you. I don't see these changes is being permanent but I think for the next, let's say, three to six months, you're going to have to operate in this sort of simplified manner, if you will, express manner, until people get used to coming back to the spa and they're comfortable and then we can probably start to ease back in as spacing restrictions go.  

So, think about pricing as well. Obviously, I'd have a few one or two treatments that were really value price to encourage people to come back. And maybe you offer those first to your loyal guests before you offer them to the public. But just be careful and just think about what you're doing because your treatment menu is your biggest sales tool. And we want to use it to encourage guests to come back.  

Of course, we're not really printing menus anymore, right? It's more about the virtual and there have been moves to put it on iPad. Of course, those of you on Booker have no problem with that. You can show something at the desk that shows treatments should you need to give someone something to see but I think we're going to see much fewer printed menus as well at this time.  

Thanks for listening. I'm going to share some contact details with you. Please reach out if you have any questions and I will look forward to seeing you sometime soon.