Spas are fit for business

Sitting high above Dubai Marina in a penthouse suite at Dubai Marriott Harbour Hotel & Suites, spa managers from the UAE and Qatar analysed relative success in 2009, debated issues such as recruitment and retail, and predicted an increased emphasis on fitness in 2010

Spas have not escaped the economic crisis unscathed, but what impact have you seen on your business specifically?

Mandy Toh: I was thinking that business in 2009 would be less than in 2008 but when we were looking at the statistics I was surprised to find that the number of guests was pretty much the same. We do see that the average spend has gone down by about 10%, but the treatment [volume] hasn’t gone down a lot.

Michael Monsod: I’ve been with the company just over a year and when I joined they’d been open a year already. The figures I have for 2009 are much better than 2008. In some cases when I break it down into recreation/fitness centre revenue over last year, it’s 300% more. I understand that definitely there is an impact on what our potential revenue would have been, but we are doing much better than last year and I think both The Palace and The Address is in a unique situation because the area that we are in is developing very nicely as a destination in itself.

We would be earning more if we look at our budgets or forecasts but we are doing better than 2008 and we are being really careful; whereas maybe people used to buy two or three products, now it’s just one.

Francisca Antunes: We are on the third year of operations, so we had an enormous growth from 2008 to 2009. We most probably lost potential but we didn’t lose in reality because we actually gained the same as Mike, 300% GOP-wise. It has been pretty impressive but business most probably would have grown much more if there wasn’t a crisis.

The way people spend changed drastically in Doha since June. In treatments we don’t notice it because it’s wellbeing, it’s health, but spend as far as retail is concerned has dropped 4%, the ratio has dropped four points. People go a lot for the packages we create much more than for one treatment. They are going for hammam and massage rather than just for hammam.

We did not have to reinvent ourselves, but we had to be a little more creative. In June, quite a lot of companies in Doha dismissed quite a lot of people — that created the fear factor, so instead of people getting spa memberships for one year they started asking us if they could get memberships for three months, so that changed.

MM: In our case July was actually our strongest month for 2009.

FA: That’s funny, mine too.

MT: Same here, July was the best month for our Timeless Spa.

Aymen Bin Ali: A lot of people didn’t travel because of the swine flu so that really encouraged a lot of local business. Our opening has been going very well so far. I’m trying to push it as hard as I can; I’m trying to get people from outside to be members because we have got a health club.

We are doing well so far with memberships and treatments; I think people are going more for massages than for full spa packages. And retail is a real challenge.

What products do you use? Do you agree retailing them is challenging?

FA: Retail is a big challenge now.

MM: For me, retail is an opportunity, you have to push it. Anyway, it’s part of guests’ home care regiment. One very good way to get them to come back is to get them to appreciate the product they are using — to get them to do that they will have to take it home and enjoy the product.

MT: I think facial products sell more than body products.

FA: Men buy a lot of body products.

AA: The best selling product here is the whitening creams, especially for face and from the GCC market.

Are consumers aware of the differences between spa brands and do they care if something is organic?

FA: We use Sodashi and we just launched a new Six Senses line this month. It is developed with a company in Thailand and very much with Six Senses people. Six Senses is very strict about what kinds of products we use, so they had to go through a lot of tests — they have to be free of chemicals, they have to be organic, the list is very extensive.

We have a lot of regular guests who know about organic products as they have been using Sodashi for three years. Guests little by little are getting into our philosophy.

MT: It’s all about letting the guest know what your brand stands for and once they know what your brand stands for, they’ll buy into that idea.

AA: There is not brand awareness. It’s ‘I want a facial’ and they don’t ask about products, especially the local market. Guests from Russia and Europe are more spa oriented.

FA: I still don’t think that anywhere in the world, apart from maybe Australia or some places in the US, people are that much aware of the types of products they buy. People are starting to ask questions. I don’t find that people worry so much about the content, they worry about the brand.

MM: It’s about how much they trust your spa. To be organic or natural is a plus but there are not that many enlightened people who are that conscious of it. If they come to your place and they trust your brand — as long as they enjoy it, feel relaxed and their skin feels refreshed and they feel and look younger — they’ll trust what brand you use. It’s up to the establishment to make sure we don’t disappoint them and it’s our responsibility to make sure we don’t provide them with low-standard products.

How is your spa positioned?

MT: We don’t want to be too expensive, we want to be at the bottom of the pack because of the facilities that we have and the amount of competition we have. This area [Dubai Marina] is the most populated spa area in Dubai. We are in a very tight spot so we need to price ourselves competitively — lower than the beach hotel but higher than the salon or the standalone spa in this area.

FA: Our signature treatments are AED 500 (US $136) but our members have 15% discount.

AA: For us it is AED 300 ($82) to AED185 ($50) for treatments; members get 15% discount. If you buy three massages, you get a fourth massage complimentary.

Why is it so important to offer spa memberships now?

AA: It’s a spa and health club. It can’t be a spa separately. Membership gives them access to pool, health club, gym, steam and sauna and 15% discount on treatments and 20% discount on F&B in the hotel. I’m trying to use other hotel facilities to promote the membership; if you have one-year membership, you get a complimentary night in the hotel or with a six-month membership, you get dinner for two or a complimentary treatment. And it is selling.

MM: At The Palace we have limited memberships with access to pool, gym, spa facilities, 20% discount on spa treatments and15% discount on food and beverage. At The Address there is no outside membership but there is a spa loyalty programme.

MT: Yes, we have limited memberships, with access to the health club, swimming pool, spa wet area, discount in the spa on treatments and discounts on F&B as well.

FA: Memberships have access to the hotel pool and the beach, to our spa facilities, to the gym. They have discount on treatments, retail, and F&B, plus they have between three and four free signature treatments a year. At the moment we have 750 members. We have 50 more places; from January onwards we will only be accepting people to fill the places of those that don’t renew. We have between 160 and 120 people a day coming into the fitness.

Moving on to staffing, is recruitment still an issue?

AA: Recruitment is very difficult. To get a therapist it took me around three months.

MM: It’s depends on where you’re looking, what you’re looking for, what you’re offering and how your organisation processes recruitment.

FA: Fitness is tougher than therapists. Our instructors are fully booked out with PT sessions. It took us a while to find what we wanted as it cannot just be a fitness instructor, it needs to be a licensed practitioner of yoga or pilates who can give some classes.

MM: I’ve been trying to fill a PT position for The Palace for the year. You get close to filling the position and then it falls through.

FA: And fitness, because it’s growing everywhere in the world, the package that is offered in the GCC countries is not that fantastic anymore to what they get in Europe, Asia etc.

AA: And a lot of people prefer to freelance these days.

Staff motivation and retention can be tough: do you give commissions?

FA: We do, on treatments and retail and fitness sales also. Our fitness manager is an amazing Sri Lankan gentleman; he has created an amazing points system, if you sell this amount you get this percentage etc and this has been working tremendously —we’ve tripled our fitness. Hosts know their commission percentage will increase depending on the sales.

MT: We don’t in this property. Marriott took over just a couple of month ago so it’s something that is in the pipeline but probably not until 2010. It is something that I want to do.

AA: We do – we give more for fitness than spa actually.

MM: We do. One of the challenges I had was trying to defend these incentive programmes to hotel managers. They say ‘why do you need to give them incentives when a food attendant doesn’t get incentives’. It’s different! You can’t compare therapists [to waiters].

FA: That’s not actually true because I was an F&B manager for quite some time and I used to give incentives on wine sales and, as a result, wine sales increased tremendously.

MM: That’s great — that’s what many people don’t understand. If you give an incentive, it’s meant to boost performance.

FA: We’re working with immigrants; that is something we cannot forget. We are all immigrants and I think 99% of an immigrant’s focus is money; to send money home and improve the life of the family home. It’s not that they’re going to work better for the commission, but they’ll be happier because they can get more money to send to their family.

MM: I succeeded [in securing a commission structure] but it was a bit of a struggle to make [the management] realise that first of all it is an industry standard, if you don’t have it, it will

be hard for you to retain your staff. Plus there is a purpose for incentives; you want them to be happier, you want to motivate them, you want them to push business. It has to be a win-win situation.

FA: A lot of the work we do is sales and all sales people get incentives. If a sales person of a hotel gets incentives for their sales, why shouldn’t the person who is selling products and treatments? But I have to say, being on the other side before that, it is very difficult to sit on a table with directors of all departments when one department gets commissions and no other department does. As a GM it is a very tough thing to get a group of directors together and say they are different, because F&B will say ‘I sell food’. A person comes in for an ice cream and goes out eating caviar — I sold it. It’s easy to say GMs are tough and they don’t understand you, but GMs are in a very tough position also. Like I said to my GM before, why does the therapist get commission and I have a waiter that doesn’t get commission.

What are your spa trend predictions for 2010?

FA: I don’t predict a very big growth but I predict a growth. We’ll be in our fourth year so it wont be in the 100% again but we are predicting growth. One of the things we noticed in 2009 that had an enormous growth, basically tripled, is fitness. We went from having 49 people a day average in January to 130 people a day now.

So we are investing a lot more in fitness, yoga classes, pilates classes, spinning classes. I have a waiting list on my spinning classes and we have them four times a week and are going to increase to five times a week and add them in the morning too — before work fitness.

MM: According to SpaFinder’s 2010 trends list, 2010 is the year of the hammam and that’s a very good trend for the year.

FA: The hammam was actually our number four sales in 2009.

AA: A lot of people are asking about it.

FA: It is at the same time the toughest one to sell; all the GCC people that go for a hammam know what a hammam should be.

MM: You have to try to be as authentic as possible but at the same time you have to give it a bit of character. In The Palace — The Old Town the layout in itself is not what you see exactly in a Turkish hammam, but the feel is there. What we offer is with a twist of course, gentler but with the same effect, you are exfoliated and cleansed and steamed and brand spanking new when you go out.

FA: One other thing that we’ve noticed and it’s going to be one of the things that we are focused on for 2010 is the wellness aspect and we have hired a wellness coordinator. We are working together with the Six Senses Destination Spa in Thailand because they have the best of the best as far as practitioners are concerned. We are going to do a detox programme that our destination spa does.

There is an interest there; it’s going to grow.

We have three areas of growth in 2010 — fitness, wellness and corporate wellness. So we are offering specific things for companies, like spending a few hours in the office, doing fitness counselling.

MM: I think you have a very good opportunity to do this because of your set up. In our set up, people are there either for business or they’re

there to relax and indulge but I think this is an area that definitely can be developed. At The Palace, we’ve started in the restaurant offering organic corners. I’m even coming up with an organic massage oil with our signature scent.

AA: There is the possibility of having a healthy restaurant linking with the health club at Ramada Ajman.

What are your business projections for 2010?

MM: For us, we’re being optimistic about next year but being careful about it as well. You don’t want to over project but I think we are entering 2010 a little bit more prepared than how 2009 started. We are entering 2010 with the mindset, let’s be careful, let’s not buy too much, let’s not project too much, so I think 2010 is going to be a good year in fact.

FA: I agree with you totally.

MT: We think it will be a slow year — 2010 will be slow but we don’t foresee a big drop in treatment revenue. What we intend to do is to go with shorter treatments that will incorporate the F&B department as well by offering a spa and lunch package. We did this is 2009 and this worked extremely well.

The other thing would be that we’ll be looking at the treatment menu, removing those that aren’t popular and adding new treatments catering not so much to the GCC community but to the expatriate resident. We’ll be introducing for ladies a brightening facial and for men, it will be the massage and back massage.

MM: For The Palace, 2010 would be the year that we would definitely move forward with launching the spa rebrand. We were previously Sofitel [Le Spa], now it’s The Address Hotels + Resorts. We’ve changed our menu, introduced signature treatments and enhanced our oriental hammam ritual. So my focus for 2010 is to make sure we really get it out in the market and highlight the unique selling points of the spa. For The Address, like Mandy, I would like to incorporate more F&B and physical health elements into the experience of the spa clients. We have a very good opportunity to target corporate groups at The Address.

AA: My plan is marketing, new packages. It’s going to be more fitness and wellbeing oriented and I’m going to try to include nutrition. I’m going to put in express treatments because people are looking for value. A hammam is a very good idea that I want to push for. I do have the space for it. I’m going to launch the spa at Ramada Downtown Burj Dubai; it’s like a tropical cabin with a view of the pool.

And finally, have plans for a Middle East or country specific spa associations moved forward?

MM: At the moment, it needs some capital, there is the issue of what name you can attach to it, plus it is a bit of a challenge to get everyone together on a regular basis. But I foresee that it will happen.

FA: It must. It has to HR-wise. In Doha, we had one meeting in October and are planning another one. So it is just starting but at least spa managers are talking to each other.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU: HOTELIER’S EXPERT PANEL

Michael Monsod
Spa & recreation manager
The Palace, The Old Town
Spa manager
The Address, Downtown Burj Dubai
Dubai, UAE

Michael Monsod started in the spa and recreation industry in 1998 with a resort property in the Philippines. After that, he joined Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in the Philippines before transferring to Shangri-La Dubai.

In his current role, Monsod manages a two-floor spa at The Palace with six treatment rooms, two hammam areas, a small gym and a pool. The Spa at The Address has 11 treatment rooms, an aroma room and ice cave.

Aymen Ben Ali
Director of spa and health club
Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman
Ajman, UAE

An athlete turned personal trainer turned spa manager, Aymen Bin Ali worked for Grand Hyatt Dubai as assistant spa manager before taking up his current role with R Hospitality, owner of the Ramada Ajman and Ramada Downtown Burj Dubai. The spa launched six months ago with two treatment rooms, but Ben Ali is currently looking at growing the facility — including potentially adding a hammam.
Ben Ali is also working on a business plan to introduce a small spa at Ramada Downtown Burj Dubai, which opened in December.

Mandy Toh
Spa manager
Dubai Marriott Harbour Hotel & Suites
Dubai, UAE

Mandy Toh entered the hotel industry in sales and marketing in Singapore with Raffles International in 2000, moving to Dubai to work for Le Méridien for her first spa posting. She previously worked for Banyan Tree before opening up the spa at Dubai Marriott Harbour Hotel & Suites, previously managed by Emirates Hotels and Resorts.

The spa is still branded under Emirates Timeless brand and features four ladies treatment rooms, two male treatment rooms, a gym, pool and kids pool.

Francisca Antunes
Spa director
Six Senses Spa at Sharq Village and Spa
Doha, Qatar

Francisca Antunes entered the spa industry six months ago, leaving behind hotel operations and general management to fulfil a dream to work for Six Senses. She started her career with Hyatt, moving on to operations manager, hotel manager and GM with Starwood and InterContinental.

The 6500m² Six Senses Spa has 23 treatment rooms, which include Thai rooms, a hammam, group hammams, dry flotation rooms, three meditation rooms and two fitness areas — one female-only and one mixed.

What product lines do you use?

• The Address Downtown Burj Dubai: ESPA.
• The Palace — The Old Town: Carita, Decleor and Les Sans de Marrakech.
• Six Senses Spa at Sharq Village and Spa: Sodashi and Six Senses — new in-house line launched at the end of last year.
• Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman: Bella Lucce and Eminence Organics, an organic range from Hungary.
• Dubai Marriott Harbour Hotel & Suites: Sodashi, Babor and Timeless Spa private label (created for Timeless Spa by Babor).

How much is a 60-minute massage?

• The Address Downtown Burj Dubai/ The Palace — The Old Town: AED 475 ($129).
• Six Senses Spa at Sharq Village and Spa: AED 500 ($136).
• Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman: AED 300 ($82).
• Dubai Marriott Harbour Hotel & Suites: AED 300 ($82).