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Spa manager enjoys change
Every day brings new challenges at the Wigwam Resort’s Red Door Spa
Cassie Hernandez took a job as a makeup artist at a Red Door Spa in Illinois simply to pay for college.
She had known since she was a kid that she wanted to be a lawyer, relishing the “right vs. wrong” mentality, the debating and the politics. She headed down that path by studying criminal justice at a community college outside of Chicago.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Bar exam: She grew to love the world of pampering.
Hernandez has been with the luxury Red Door chain, which has 31 locations, ever since and is now one of its youngest general managers, based at the Red Door Spa at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa in Litchfield Park.
She said she was driven by people who told her when she joined Red Door as a makeup technician that the highest position she could attain was department manager. “I thought, that’s absolutely impossible,” Hernandez said.
In reality, she rose quickly to department manager and then had a succession of managerial jobs that culminated with her appointment at the Wigwam before it opened in early 2006. She said the best part about her job is the blank slate that each day brings.
“I like not knowing what tomorrow’s going to bring,” she said. “That doesn’t make things mundane; it makes it exciting.”
Hernandez, who oversees a staff of 49, said there are a host of misperceptions about the job. The response she gets most: “Oh, you must be relaxed.”
“What a lot of people don’t know about the operations of a spa is, you do HR, you do payroll, you do operations. You’re kind of everything in one,” she said.
The spa business has changed dramatically in the past several years, with the advent of day spas and medical spas bringing intense competition to the likes of the Red Door Spa and other destination resort spas. The new kids on the block have sharpened operations at places like the Red Door.
“You have to be willing to change your old habits,” she said.
Hernandez said that means doing things such as allowing customers to tailor their treatments. If there’s an hour-long massage and a client wants 45 minutes of it concentrated on the feet, so be it.
The economy has brought another challenge. Hernandez estimates the resort side of the spa business is down about 18 percent in the past few months, as financially pinched vacationers stay home.
The spa decided to focus even more on guests in the Wigwam’s backyard, who already account for a chart-topping 60 percent of the spa’s business. It offered group discounts for friends who came in together and drew on a database of e-mails provided by former guests.
“The entire industry is changing every day,” Hernandez said.
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