THE SPA TREATMENT MENU: CREATE, EMBRACE, COMMIT
What is your treatment menu?
A definitive and consolidated listing of your spa services.
A guest communication device which should grow anticipation
A training tool to ensure your team have a comprehensive guide to your primary guest communication and your therapists are adequately trained in your offering.
A tool enabling you to introduce your spa services to those out with the spa both digitally and with a hard copy.
This list could continue however before putting too much emphasis on your menu, we need to focus on its fundamental purpose.
Telling people what you do in the hope it makes them book.
We could put together a ton of examples of bad treatment brochures, too long, too short, too dull, too dated, off brand, too much like another brand, too flashy, too big but mostly too easy to blame.
A simple process is ensuring the menu you create, lives and, more importantly, succeeds in your spa which can be boiled down to the following:
Create, embrace, commit.
Create
You have pulled all your treatment mix for the past 3 years; you have established your hits & misses. You know that the full body massage accounts for 60% of your sales and everything else wanders around your massage mountain skipping and picking flowers and showing no signs of ambition. It’s time to do the good bit, get your creative slippers and your expressive bath robe on and immerse yourself in your space.
Your treatment brochure needs to have a lifespan of at least 2 years to allow for the basics, such as cost-effective printing, consistency for guests, establishing reasonable marketing strategy, establishing a therapist training programme, so this is a long term project and requires some time and some thought.
Most brochures lead with Signature Treatments, unique to the Spa and often reflective of the local culture and indigenous offering. Is this something that is realistic to your spa? On average these account for (at best) 10% of your sales mix, so theoretically, they should be a footnote beneath your big hitters in your menu. However, they are your Beyoncé’s, they are the other worldly superstars exclusively available within your spa, they need time and preparation to deliver and they need exceptional therapists.
Realistically, they will not be of interest to the standard spa goer, as your 60% massage statistic suggests, however they are of interest to you, your team, your press, they essentially define your spa character, essential to your well-rounded brochure, however maybe one will suffice, there is, after all, only one Beyoncé.
The rest of your menu should be balanced with your ability to deliver, everyone loves hot stones, but this is a skill that some therapists are not confident in. If it goes on the menu, prepare to minimise guest disappointment, and maximise training time to ensure that four handed synchronised massage can be performed when requested, with skill and with confidence.
Consider brochure colour, treatment descriptions, treatment names as pivotal to setting the tone for your spa annual strategy’s. Simple changes to basic treatments can cause such confusion to therapist, guests & reservationists that change is not always best and providing consistency in some areas, allows for a focus on training and developing a more advanced offering. Then teaching your team how to sell them.
Embrace
Once you have created the brochure, believe it to answer your guest needs, the next step is to shake its hand and tell it you have every confidence in it and you will support it till its dying day.
Think of it like your favourite pair of shoes/bag/suit/cufflinks, they are deliciously elegant and comfortable, they suit every occasion, they make you feel just downright lovely, however when the bottom falls out of that bag, it’s time to give it up.
Believe in it and ensure your team believe in it, know it and love it.
Commit
This is our menu. This is what we offer. We believe this offers everything our guests may desire within our physical space.
Commitment is an underrated action in the spa industry. It ultimately relies on commitment from therapists, product partners, managers, guests. It benefits and relies immeasurably on building loyalty and a deep sense of emotional engagement from all stakeholders. It’s not a momentary experience, it’s a unique intense, physical and emotional shift throughout every working day. To underestimate that and have a reductive attitude to the basics such as a treatment menu impacts that sense of commitment.
Your treatment menu might be an A4 page containing 6 massages and one facial, or it might be a 64-page catalogue detailing every treatment element. These are all great, if you have created it, with knowledge and time, embraced it, with collaborative enthusiasm and committed to it with strategic goals and future planning.
Get in touch with us if you require any help at all when it comes to your Treatment Menu engineering.
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