Beauty, brands and business on topic at spa summit

Yesterday saw hundreds of the Middle East’s top spa professionals descend on Grosvenor House Hotel Dubai for the first day of the Hotelier Middle East Spa & Wellness Summit 2014.

Back for its second year, the summit was host to a series of expert panel discussions and workshops discussing a range of topics from recruitment challenges, providing value and why spas should think twice about relying on Groupon promotions.

The day’s events kicked off with the first panel session entitled ‘The Future of Spa & Wellness’, chaired by Hilton Worldwide director of spa operations & development MEA Sharon Barcock, with the panel on stage discussing the growing importance of the spa industry.

Joining Barcock on stage was Simon Casson, the regional vice president and general manager of the soon to open Four Seasons Resort Dubai, and chairman of the Four Seasons Global Spa Taskforce, who admitted that while the spa industry is already well established in the Middle East, it was one in “which Four Seasons has been quite slow to enter.”

However, Casson declared that Four Season’s approach had now changed as while “10 year ago spas were an afterthought, now there are no projects we are doing where the spa is not one of the primary elements.”

For the day’s next panel, the summit moved onto the topic of recruitment and the challenges that every operator in the region seem to be facing with high staff turnovers and training.

In a discussion entitled ‘The Importance of Staffing – The Challenges Faced by Spa Operators in the UAE to Address Market Gaps’, the panel discussed the effectiveness of bonus schemes to counter the problem of staff turnover. However, Sofitel The Palm Director of Spa & Recreation Michael Monsod admitted that “the biggest problem is getting an incentive scheme approved in the first place, as you find that whatever incentives you wanted to offer end up having to be reduced to get past your finance department and therefore lose their effectiveness.”

“Our staff know who in the market is offering what and if you can’t keep up with others then they will just leave,” he added.

Finance was a key theme for the day’s events, with a later panel discussion also covering the key business principals of spa operations. Hosted by spa supplier The Product House managing director Janette Gladstone-Watts, the panel ‘Providing Value Shouldn’t Mean a Compromise on Service’ discussed the financial decisions facing spa operators in the Middle East, with discount and voucher services such as Groupon firmly in the panel’s sights.

Beverley Spencer, spa manager at Dubai’s Cleopatra Spa & Wellness was the first to warn of such services, saying that “while they are used across the market, they have to be used sparingly as they can cheapen your brand”.

“Discounting can be a much more effective tactic, with off-peak and on-peak pricing being a long term alternative to what are only short term solutions,” she added.

Hilton Worldwide’s Sharon Barcock went even further declaring that “the time of the Groupon discount has passed, as while we have all tried it and they do bring volume, I don’t think it has brought anyone the revenue we wanted.”

The Hotelier Middle East Spa & Wellness Summit continues today Grosvenor House Hotel Dubai, with a series of expert workshops and hands-on product demonstrations guiding attendees through some of the industry’s most exciting new trends, and you can follow all the day’s action at our live blog of the event here.