Benchmarking

Benchmarking in the spa industry was a big topic up for discussion during the panel, with Hewerdine claiming that while he measures his own KPIs, he doesn’t know how other spas are doing this, and so it’s hard to compare results.

Hawco asserts that many spa managers are too concerned with the business of spa rather than the spa business, and he thinks more conversations around revenue management need to take place. Spencer on the other hand feels that language barriers mean that only snippets of information can be shared.

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Here’s what our experts said

Hewerdine: “We do our own KPIs but I don’t know if you’re doing it the same way or if you’re calculating it the same way. It is funny when you see some of the therapist occupancies on there, or the room occupancies and some people put down 99%, so there’s no standard.”

Hawco:“I don’t think it’s just that we should share, I think we have to share for the benefit of the industry. I’m not a spa director — I’m a business man. I think more conversations have to be had about yield management, revenue management and not so much about products and new treatments and packaging. I think maybe setting up some kind of benchmarking in the region could help.”

bonner: “But I think what’s important is that everyone is honest with the information. I think we don’t want these figures to judge staff on their performance but we need to trend our business.”

Amer: “When staff start to understand the spa business as a business then they will start to move. Therapists think: ‘I’m enjoying my job’, but you need to get them to work together to make the spa business.”

Antoniouk: “We could share targets, they have to understand. I think it’s important to have multi-skilled staff. Sometimes you don’t have many bookings, so what can they do? Perhaps cross-training, cleaning, promotions? In my team I’ve been doing this for a long time, and the more skills they have the more valuable they become.”

Spencer: “I try to make things as simple as possible so staff understand what the expectations are. It’s giving them simple things to let them understand how that contributes to the overall business. E.g. how many clients do you need to see today will give them an indication of their productivity.”

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