July - August 2009
There are many benefits to using a proper Spa Management System, from how the management markets the spa’s services to local clients and tourists, to how staff and transactions are tracked within the system. A description of a few of the many potential benefits follows. This is far from being a complete list.
Benefit: Improving Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
In an article I wrote in 2004, I mentioned that researchers estimated the average consumer received roughly one million marketing messages a year across all media. These include print and television advertisements, roadside billboards, postal fliers, email solicitations and even internet pop-ups. With new web-based communication and networking tools like Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Linked-In and many more, I’d venture to say the average consumer now receives much closer to two million marketing messages a year.
Trying to get marketing messages across to your clients has become a very difficult task. CRM cannot be just about collecting, processing and reporting client information; it is about serving clients in an essentially enhanced way. Though some of these ideas are rather basic, here are a few considerations in further reaching your clients:
Use personal dates that are important to your clients. There are important dates in every person’s life, such as his or her birthday, anniversary, child’s birth, graduation or job promotion. Each of these events provides an opportunity to promote the spa’s services and products at a meaningful time to the client.
A personalized email wishing the client a happy birthday, or a special his & her service on their anniversary provides a much greater return on marketing initiatives. Since these events are significant to the client, the spa has an opportunity to strengthen their relationship and increase future business.
The spa can also send automatic confirmations for upcoming appointments, which provides yet another opportunity to highlight products and services in a message the client is more likely to open. These event-based outbound messages are seen as being less intrusive since they are based on recent interactions. Some have estimated that event-driven marketing efforts produce response rates five times greater than traditional outbound campaigns.
Further client interaction can be based around client interests, conveniently managed within your system. Know what types of products, music and treatments your clients like. Then on occasion, send out a promotion highlighting specials for those who share a common interest. Again, reaching out to clients based on information of value to them.
Benefit: Maximize Yield Per Customer
A significant benefit of maintaining historical data within the system is the ability to use statistics to maximize yield per customer. Most spa directors will recognize that the demand for treatments greatly exceeds the supply during certain parts of the week, or even certain parts of the day. Using historical data, they can recognize when demand is strong, when it is moderate and when it is weak.
Using this data, management can set pricing strategies to manage demand at each level. In times when demand is strong, prices could be increased to bring demand more in-line with supply. For times when demand is weak, enticing local residents with lower priced treatments will be an effective measure to increase demand and boost revenues.
Benefit: Employee Productivity
Employee productivity can be positively affected by the installation of an integrated Spa Management System. By electronically integrating the booking agenda with client profiles and sales data, spa managers can receive daily and monthly statistical reports at the press of a button. No longer is there a need for long hours of manual data entry to retrieve required management information.
The time saved in properly managing the data and reporting statistics, allows staff to be more productive serving clients. The increased employee productivity results in improved customer service, better utilization of available times, better matching treatments with therapists and client requests, etc.
Benefit: Reduce Inventory Costs and Out-of-Stocks
Knowing more about the historical sales pattern at the spa’s boutique, and keeping track of minimum stock levels can assist in lowering the cost of both retail and professional stock.
When inventory and sales records were kept manually, the only way a spa would be able to keep retail items in the boutique and professional items in the treatment rooms would be to maintain a very high level of stock. Managing inventory turn times and restocking times was a very difficult task.
With a properly implemented retail and point-of-sale system, lower levels of inventory can be maintained in both the boutique and treatment rooms. Each item is given a PAR value that alerts management when these low-inventory levels are met. Further, the system provides re-stock levels to ensure spa management places an appropriate order with suppliers.
Benefit: Integration between Spa and the Resort PMS
Imagine, your reception team is waiting for a two hotel guests to arrive for their afternoon treatment – a husband and wife who booked a three hour, couples signature treatment - and they never show up. Curious, the spa’s staff calls to the hotel to connect to the guest’s room to see if they’re coming in.
Upon inquiry, the hotel staff mentions that guests by that name aren’t staying at the hotel. Further query indicates the guests canceled their stay several weeks back. What should have been a three hour couples signature treatment has turned into a deluxe treatment room going vacant for several hours, and two therapists with nothing to do. A loss that could have been avoided with full integration between the Hotel & Spa systems.
With full integration between the two systems, hotel reservations staff will be informed that a guest canceling their booking also has a reservation in the spa. The reservation agent will then be prompted to ask if the guest would like to keep the spa booking, or cancel it along with the room. If the guest cancels the spa booking too, the space and therapist are made available for other bookings.
It is quite important that a full-link exist between the resort’s PMS and the Spa booking system. This will improve relations with clients and will reduce revenues lost through missed cancellations. An enhanced link between the Spa System and the resort’s PMS is often overlooked when reviewing systems. It is however, an important feature for hotel and resort properties to consider.
Summary
Most spa solutions should be capable of adding some value to the spa, particularly in providing a booking engine for spa treatments. These systems should be quite capable in providing advanced reporting to help spa and resort management in analyzing data. These alone should provide some return on investment.
Aside from the financial investment the spa makes to purchase the system, they should also be prepared to invest time into a) researching the best solution for their facility, and b) ensuring proper onsite implementation of the system. It’s through proper research and training that a spa will be able to fully utilize their system and realize a proper return on investment.
