[L-R] Paul Hawco, Afrah Hamdy, and Sayed Salem, photographed at the Anantara The Palm Dubai Resort’s hammam. [L-R] Paul Hawco, Afrah Hamdy, and Sayed Salem, photographed at the Anantara The Palm Dubai Resort’s hammam.

Afrah HAMDY: I agree 100% and if we focus on creating awareness to people who are coming from all over the world to stay in our hotel about the wellness programmes we do in-house… if they trust you then they become the big spenders [in the spa].

Paul: Exactly. Looking at the growth of the wellness tourism industry, you can break it down into primary wellness guests, which are the ones coming now and this will grow. But the secondary guests who are looking just for healthy hotels, good experiences, a wellness day or a yoga day and to get some education — that’s where the growth is coming from and that provides the other 10-15%. To aim for 20%, yes I threw that out there — that’s high. But definitely achieving 10-20% is possible.

Sayed: Increasing the capture rate has to do with the room rate of the hotels.

Paul: It’s the mix that comes to the hotel. My Maldives properties get 22%. Why can’t we have that? There’s more to do here — it’s a great destination for shopping and for beach and for sightseeing. It’s a great place to be but I want my spas to have that.

Sayed: It also has to do with what the authorities can do to help increase capture rate and it has to do with the room rate too. We have seven spas and we do a comparison between the venues and we have noticed that the hotel that has the higher room rate captures more guests. They have better increase in retail revenue also, and although the number of treatments isn’t necessarily higher than others, the quality of the guests show they are really high spenders. People will seek discounted prices over the next 12 months so we have to tactically create an attractive promotion and we have to seek the thoughts of the customers looking for discounts.

Paul: This is important and not just because we are approaching the low season, but at the same time, I don’t want it to be a discount-driven industry otherwise you lose authenticity and you lose the value of what it is people are coming for. I wish there was a consolidated effort for price management but I think the way around it, or at least what we’re working on, is the idea of a wellness month where a lot of it is complimentary. We need to offer value and give back to the community, to Dubai, to guests and people that come.

HOTELIER: What other support do you think the wellness industry needs in raising awareness of the region as a wellness or spa destination?

Sayed: I think they should start building a free spa treatment into the room rate of the hotels. This shift in thinking has to do with increasing capture rate as well — because if you build a free spa treatment into the room rate you will definitely have a higher footfall of guests coming into the spa. When it comes to pricing, we have to really looking into creating different loyalty programmes to ensure people are able to have spa treatments at an attractive rate without saying we are discounting. It’s a smarter way to approach it.

Paul: I think your question is more about what we need to do to become more of a destination for spa and wellness. We can’t do it by ourselves. A lot of spas do a great job — we go deep into a lot of marketing initiatives, campaigns and rate strategies, but we definitely need help beyond one spa or one spa group. DTCM are focusing on it overall, but the medical side is where the bigger need is because those people need help right away and have issues that need to be addressed and there is more funding and recognition for that. But it would help if we have a governing body or association as well to help drive or pull together some of these things we’re talking about. Ultimately, we do packages and a lot of other things but who knows about it? Spas are a little bit passive about how we get to market.

Afrah: One thing I will add is [about] the qualification process. We have been hearing news that in the spa sector, every therapist needs to be re-certified. Most of our spa therapists are already certified and in order to pass the DHA test they will need to have at least two years or 600 hours’ of training, and you need to also have professional hands-on experience too. The point I want to make is that our therapists are willing to take any kind of examination — we just want to make the process easier and then mark the UAE as a spa destination where people can come safely and have their wellness programmes and spa treatments by very highly trained individuals.

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