Wealth and hellness: Asia spas face business reality
For an industry that promotes wellbeing and relaxation, spas are becoming cut-throat businesses where your marketing campaign matters just as much as your body wrap.
At a recent gathering in Manila, marketing guru Raymond Nadeau tried to show some 300 Asian spa executives how to make their fortunes in the region’s spa boom, and also survive in a tough industry that has more than doubled in the last five years.
“You’re such nice people, but you can get over that,” said Nadeau, author of “Living brands” and a consultant to Hollywood actress and singer Jennifer Lopez. “Traditional marketing is about hating each other, so you’re an anomaly.”
During the event, one compere nervously started a speech with a spoonerism, saying spas were “all about wealth and hellness”. Other spa owners seemed unable to cope with the fact that they were losing masseuses to better paying spas in Dubai.
Around 2,250 spas operate in Southeast Asia and Australia, according to research firm Intelligent Spas, and about 130 are under construction and set to open next year. Some industry players say a further 600 will open in the next five years.
In a region where massage was traditionally part of daily life, spas appeal to the affluent and tourists by adding herbal wraps, ice fountains, mud and seawater baths and aromatherapy.
Hotels too are finding spas lucrative and are at the forefront of the expansion, especially in Thailand and Indonesia.
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has found its guests in the United States spend on average $76 more in a hotel with a spa, and stay a day longer, the firm’s spa director Andrew Gibson said. “It’s a pillar of our business,” he added.
But Dieter Buchner, who runs a Bangkok-based spa training firm called Urban Healing, said many spa managers were unprepared for the business tasks asked of them.
“Now spa managers are required to come up with feasibility studies, and cash flow forecasts,” Buchner said. “They’re suddenly pushed into an arena no one’s ever prepared them for. If you look at other industries, we’re way behind.”
Spas also need to get more inventive with their marketing, Nadeau said. Most have a predilection for pictures of a contented clear-skinned beauty lying faced down on a massage table, usually with some mention of “pampering” or “indulgence”.
“If you say ‘mind, body and soul’ you become a commodity — potatoes,” Nadeau said. “Adapt it.” He said spas should launch products and adopt cutting edge marketing techniques.
Because of tougher competition, some spas were making unrealistic promises about treatments, according to Samantha Foster, a director at Thai resort Chiva-Som.
She pointed to a survey by a U.S. magazine that showed 46 percent of respondents said they had had a bad spa experience in the previous 12 months, including complaints about pushy staff, unhygienic premises, noise and lack of privacy.
With “wellness” the new industry buzzword — the idea of developing a healthy mind and body — spas are bringing in alternative medical treatments, including Chinese medicine.
And conventional hospitals are getting in on the act. Singapore’s Raffles Medical Group, for example, has set up an “aesthetics centre” with detox programs and Swedish massage advertised next to breast augmentation and botox.
Nadeau said spas should stop being coy about advertising what people really wanted: better looks and sex.
“People like sex, and if people are well, they have sex,” he said. “And in the real world, what people want is beauty at any cost and immortality.”
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