The spa industry continues to be affected by current labor shortages and challenges, so Questex's Jennifer Willey held a virtual roundtable with spa professionals to discuss how spas are dealing with this ongoing issue.
Meet the Spa Industry Experts
- Daniel Spencer, Director of Spa at Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa (Rancho Mirage, CA) and The Spa at Sec-he (Palm Springs, CA)
- John Morris, General Manager at Sundara Inn and Spa (Wisconsin Dells, WI)
- Marissa Krems, Executive Director of Spa & Wellness at The Elms Hotel & Spa (Excelsior Springs, MO)
- Nancy Deaton, Spa Director at The Lodge at Woodloch (Hawley, PA)
- Sandra Sadowski, Owner at Brookwall Hospitality Consulting
- Stephanie Scott, Vice President of Retail & Wellness Services at Crystal Mountain (Thompsonville, MI)
- Wendie Keen, Vice President of Spa and Owner Services at Boyne Resorts
Jennifer Willey (JW): What are your biggest challenges with staffing right now?
Wendie Keen (WK): We are really challenged in the salon world getting nail techs, to the point that we're taking salons out of some of the spas. Getting nail techs and cosmetologists has been a challenge. We're doing a bit better now with therapists, but that was a big concern for quite some time. We've had to modify our compensation, and we're working on better scheduling because it's difficult for new therapists to get enough good shifts where they can get quite a bit of revenue.
Overall, our biggest challenge has been trying to recruit people with the licensure. If we could figure out a way to have reciprocity, being able to recruit people from Florida to come to a resort area in the summer or therapists from other states, if we could have a license like a driver’s license that could be used everywhere; it would be helpful. If anyone knows of a way to continue to push this at the national level, I'd certainly be interested in hearing.
Daniel Spencer (DS): One thing for us that is a little unique is the background check required for all applicants. When we offer an applicant a job, they go through a long background check to get a license to work on property which can take up to three weeks from the time they start the process, all prior to giving a two-week notice. This does not include the date of interview. On average it is a 5-week process before they start their first day of orientation. Sometimes applicants drop off during the process because they're offered another position, and that's an issue being in Palm Springs. I know some locations are very remote, and it's hard to get people. But we have seen an increase in applicants compared to what we were seeing six months ago, and our job fairs where we might have had 10 applicants coming throughout a day versus now we're having 30 to 40 applicants come through the queue.
Stephanie Scott (S. Scott): Our therapist numbers before the pandemic were in the mid-20s and now we're in the mid-teens with many of those people very part-time. Our biggest challenge is with massage therapists and being able to recruit enough massage therapists to meet demand. We have lost all of our schools in the area. There was a college with a wonderful program about 45 minutes away that was a great feeder program for us and helped us recruit outside of the area. We are a resort area that has very expensive housing. That makes housing limited, so recruiting outside of the area is a challenge. We're looking at what we need to do to invest, to send people to schools elsewhere, because we don't have the capacity to be able to do our own school as far as space or resources. We have lots of estheticians that want to work for us. We're looking at what sort of opportunities we can do to add appealing body treatments that they can offer. Nail techs are a challenge because we don't do hair, so it's hard to attract a nail tech that's just doing nails. We're looking at what to do with our nail salon going forward. Do we just eliminate it altogether?
John Morris (JM): We have seen a little improvement. If you asked me this question 18 months ago, it was bad, but we've seen what I call some green shoots in the last 18 months. During COVID, it was very difficult with people that wanted to leave the industry. They didn't want to come back and work. But we've worked our way through that, and the two tangible things I want to pass on: 1) we started our own massage school. It's not a huge undertaking. We only had four students, but it was very successful and a tremendous win for us. We were able to graduate four students where we monitored their progress in school and therefore knew the quality of their work. We do have the standard sign-on bonus, but the other thing I want to mention is that there's some talk out there about artificial intelligence massage tables. We bought a massage table for the guests who can't get a massage because we don't have availability or for that percentage of the population that don't want to get touched by another human being or just looking for a little less expensive alternative, and it's almost paid for itself in nine months.
As for nail techs, that's an ongoing problem everywhere. We have nine nail techs currently, which is amazing. People are shocked at what we have, but it's some of the other projects we're looking at not to do is salons because the labor pool is so bad for nail technicians.
Sandra Sadowski (S. Sadowski): From the spas we've worked with, we’ve heard that a lot of staff during COVID went out on their own. The towns where they lived were much more lenient about allowing them to work from home and have a business out of their home, whereas they might have needed to be zoned for that in the past. Those leniencies allowed people to do that and then they just didn't want to go back. Also, with the influx of salon suites, it's been very competitive because people can have their own suite, and they can make their own mini business within a hub. I don't know if you're seeing those in your demographics, but we definitely have a lot in the New York City metro area. With people being able to do online marketing so easily and set parameters for marketing themselves, it's that gig job for a lot of the therapists.
What's interesting in my line of work, doing so much development and scaling, we've had a lot of requests for staffing like recruitment. We just did it for a medical spa that's opening up because they find that especially with an opening, it's much more beneficial for them to hire someone for two months to do all their recruitment. Then the in-house HR person can focus on setting up their HR department. We've had a lot of those requests, and it's because of the difficulty of staffing. The reason I'm telling you all this is that one of my team members put together a couple of lists. People that were working from home and then going back to a spa wanted to be paid so much more. They wanted a huge increase over the last couple of years that it was making the margin much smaller for the spa and not making it very desirable for owners. One list showed, when you work for yourself, here's all the things that you must do. Here's all the expenses that maybe you're not considering. Another list showed, when you work for this company or this spa, here's all the things that we do for you. And this is all part of your package. So, this is why your salary is what it is because of all the expenses at the spa. We broke it out and did a little educational exercise with anybody who made it to the second interview because we wanted to ensure that they understood the business. We found that we were able to recruit a lot more people because they understood the financials better. They understood that if they wanted to sustain long-term on their own, there were other factors that they might not think about like laundry, reception costs, marketing, etc.
Nancy Deaton (ND): Similar to John, we partnered with a local college and have provided them with a program director who is also their instructor and formed a scholarship program for some of our current staff members who aren't treatment providers. This has been a great way to make sure that the curriculum is what we need it to be and then also have staff, my locker room attendants for instance, who have gone through the program and have been able to transition into becoming a massage therapist. It’s helped us and has been a great partnership with the local college. We found in our area in Pennsylvania that we had a lot of massage therapy schools closing due to lack of enrollment. We wanted to make sure that we were nurturing this relationship, and because they were going through a lot of different instructors, they didn’t have a consistent program. For us, this partnership was worth the monetary investment into the college. We have gotten to a point where I'm even afraid to say it, but we're pretty much fully staffed with my treatment team, which we never thought would happen. Our biggest struggle right now is filling staff positions like locker room attendants.
Marissa Krems (MK): It’s very similar to what Stephanie was saying for us. It's been very difficult to recruit massage therapists since we closed for COVID. When we closed the spa, we had 52 service providers. We reopened with 28 service providers. Rebuilding that team has been difficult over the last few years. I know that it was discussed earlier, but many of our therapists went on their own, started their own company. We're still recovering from that. We have several different initiatives that have been successful within the last year or so, and we're building that team back up, but it's been slow with the recruitment process for us.
JW: Some of you have touched on the initiatives you're taking to find more of a staffing pool. Outside of partnering with a massage school or creating your own massage school, what are some of the other ideas that you are implementing to find good people and then to retain the people that you have. Do you have any specific thoughts around this idea?
S. Scott: Pay has been a big thing. We’ve removed the discounts and promotions that affected spa therapist compensation over the last couple of years. There are very few discounts that affect them; they're getting paid on the gross service price now. We've increased PTO for our full-time therapists to an average rate of what they've made over the past year on hourly and commission. That vastly increased what their PTO value was because they weren't taking it because they didn't have any value in it. We’re getting more flexible on scheduling. We're a resort. We need them here Friday night through Sunday, but they want to be here Monday through Thursday. So, we’re getting far more flexible on how we're doing our scheduling. And culture, culture, culture, culture. Just trying to make it a place that they want to be because they have the option to be able to work wherever they want to be. That's primarily for licensed tech, but on the front house side of things, we were struggling for a while. We've made some major shifts on management, leadership, culture, and pay, and they've added up. We are fully staffed on our front house, including a brand-new director starting tomorrow, which I'm very excited about.
DS: We were in the same boat after COVID at both properties and lost a lot of team members. It was hard to get them back, as a lot went out and looked for their own locations. There was a big shift in the culture. We tried to relate everything and asked them to think about being at home with guests staying at the house. How does the dynamic of the home change? We helped them understand that the dynamic shift was a natural process. We needed to keep the people we had and bring on new team members with an idea that this is an exciting new time where an older spa developed a kind of a rebirth. We kept pay scales competitive with no discounting. We broke it down with real numbers and being transparent so that they could make a fair assessment. For Se’c-he, being brand new, there was a ton of excitement for people coming on board. Therapists, once they've come on, they stay. We are having more fluctuation keeping front desk and locker staff because it's competitive. We ask what's their purpose for being here and help them understand that they’re a part of the wellness journey and a bigger part of it than they might be at a different location. If they bring someone on who gets hired and stays for 90 days, then they get a referral bonus for that person. We offer medical benefits with full-time positions and that is what usually tips people over to stay or come on board.
MK: We've reached out to our local schools to host lunch and learns. We'll cater something like Chipotle for lunch, and I take one of our lead therapists with us. We have a benefits package, more of a "get to know us" packet, that we hand out with a little spa swag bag. We let the students eat lunch, and it's a Q&A. It's been so successful that within the last year we've recruited four full-time massage therapists with that program. In addition, we launched a $2,000 sign-on bonus for full-time massage therapists and then in-house, we have a $750 referral program. Any of our current therapists or employees would receive that $750 after the 90-day mark. Those have been successful for us.
We've also restructured our commission structure for a higher payout and then we started an open house that we host it in spring and fall. We started last spring. It was our first one, and we had 18 attendees. It was after-hours with refreshments, a tour of the spa space, and a Q&A for anyone that was interested in joining us here on the service side team.
S. Sadowski: We also worked with some schools. When I was at World Spa, we had a table at the Swedish Institute. We interviewed students that were going into take their exams, and we hired them. They got sponsorship from some of our lead and senior therapists. It's all state regulated, so check your state regulations. These students were able to work under someone else's license while they waited for their test results and to finish up school. We paid them at a different pay rate. Students worked in the cabanas, doing massage breaks if you will. When people came off the floor during their contrast bathing experience, they could get on the table for half an hour. They're wearing their bathing suit, and it's different than going down to the treatment center and having a traditional massage. It allowed senior therapists to keep their eyes on the students. It was exciting for the students to work when they weren't at school, and they knew the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – that they had one foot into World Spa. They knew that their commission would bump up once they graduated when they were able to come on board. There were a lot of wins in that respect. They also brought us other students, people that weren't at the open house. They were recruiting for us which was great.
Something I did when I was at Gurney’s, which is extremely seasonal, was we gave a guarantee. The therapist got an hourly and then we gave them a guarantee of at least two or three massages. On a slow day, we would call sales and marketing or the employee of the month and invite them to have a complimentary massage because we were paying the therapist anyway. It was a win/win for everyone. We also used yielding pricing. Having higher pricing during high demand times was an exciting additional income opportunity for the therapist because they were getting higher tips and, in some circumstances, higher commissions. They would say, “it's my dream to work 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but if I work in the evening or on weekends, I'm going to make more money, right?” Those money motivated massage therapists jumped at those opportunities.
The last thing I'll mention is human resources and culture. We worked with HR a lot on my last project, creating a culture, and putting together a beach cleanup project. We had T-shirts made and did it once a month with a breakfast afterwards. It created warm and fuzzy things within HR and the spa’s culture. I know you are all seasoned, and you probably already all have this, but I wanted to mention it because the therapists loved it. They said it set them apart, even the department. It set them apart from F&B, etc. which were a little bit different. The spa was always the place where everyone wanted to work because the spa itself, aside from the whole hotel, had the best culture.
JW: What are some of your success stories?
JM: When COVID hit, we hired more estheticians. We know that 65% to 70% of people calling to book appointments want a massage. Because of this, we spent a lot of time training our reservationists to try to sell guests on the therapeutic value of a body treatment, if they couldn't get a massage. It’s been very successful and as others have mentioned, it's much easier to recruit estheticians. Touchless wellness experiences fit in at Sundara only in a subdued way. As spa professionals, we get bombarded with many ideas about touchless wellness experience daily. We must sort out what is pseudo-science, witchcraft, and some of the craziest ideas. But we have been able to select a couple of these touchless wellness experiences that have been able to translate them into some significant revenues. You’ve got to be careful, but that is an alternative. I still believe in the human touch, and that is our number-one goal. Our successes include hiring more estheticians, adding a couple of the touchless wellness experiences, and starting our own school. To Stephanie’s and Wendy's points, housing is critical. If you can arrange for some type of housing, that can make a difference.
MK: We can have an esthetician requisition open within 24 hours, and we'll have 20 applicants. We got creative this past year, and we've hired some part-time estheticians in our need times, Saturday through Monday, and we train them on all body treatments that they can perform. Then we ran an incentive contest with our reception desk to offer those body treatments in place of a massage that we may not be able to provide. That was successful for us. The revenue in body treatment shot up 50%. In addition, coming out of COVID, we re-concepted a few of our treatment rooms into touchless, halotherapy rooms. We have a detox suite and halo cave. In 2023, we generated over $320,000 from those two units, and the cost per treatment is $0.10. We already have the labor with our concierge team on the floor, and they get a percentage of the service charge. Going touchless with these units was really successful for us coming out of COVID.
S. Sadowski: We brought a touchless massage table into World Spa. Because of the set up with contrast bathing and because we only had seven treatment rooms, we used it on the floor so that guests who couldn't get in for a massage could access this as an alternative. It's been a huge revenue generator. I've tried a couple of different ones – robotic, water. I don't want to get into all the technical details, but some still need a lot of work. There are some that have got it down, and it's been very helpful. I will also mention that we too hired a lot of estheticians and focused on a fun body treatment menu. In New York state, estheticians can do body treatments. When guests wanted a massage, and it wasn't available, we would talk to them about body treatments. Then we were able to utilize our estheticians and increase our body treatments.
ND: To touch upon some of those alternative treatments, about seven years ago when we were extremely short staffed, we brought in a float cabin. That was successful for us, and our guests really liked it. It was something that a lot of people were not offering at the time and really helped bring in that revenue for a treatment room that wasn't being used. We recently took our float cabinet out, and we are going to offer a different touchless treatment we've purchased through Gharieni, a vibration and sound therapy chair. The team is training on that now, and they're really excited about it. We will offer this to our guests as an alternative to hands-on treatments. It’s another way to increase revenue.
We looked at our treatment staff schedules and have a lot of different options available for them now whether they're part-time or full-time, whether they have one day off every weekend or have every other weekend off. We've been able to meet their needs and still have enough availability for our guests. Their pay depends on what schedule preference they choose, so if they make more of a commitment with their schedule, then their pay is higher. This has been successful and a game changer for us.
DS: During COVID at Sunstone, we were trying to find more touchless stuff while also trying to figure out what would fit best. We brought in two halotherapy units, and during COVID, we were charging for that. Over time, we started increasing the entry fee to get into the spa, and then made it available for everybody. Sunstone is a small footprint, about 10,000 square feet with smaller locker areas. We have what are essentially single person booths. We had to manage through how to make sure every guest had an opportunity to go in because it is complementary. That allowed us to increase our general entry and took away the upselling side for the front desk agent who sometimes gets caught up trying to make sure they're upselling a $30 to $40 session versus simply increasing the price by $10 on every single guest that walks through the door. It also makes every guest experience that much better, because now everyone's getting to try something, maybe something they've never tried before, maybe something they wouldn't have wanted to pay for or had concerns about paying for something and not having the results they would expect. It also had a great PR perspective. We would have someone coming in to write a story, and they’d ask about it. It's a great talking feature.
We did conduct the entire spa. We tore out all the carpeting, laid down copper strips using conductive glues and then conductive fibers in the carpet, so guests can take their sandals off and as soon as they touch the floor, they're completely grounded. We use conductive zero gravity chairs, so there's this whole grounding experience taking place. We were already going to redo the carpet so why just put down basic carpet? We could do something different and beneficial. For the treatment tables, we reset with grounding so then every time the guest is lying on the treatment table, they are getting a full grounded session. The therapist grounds through the guest as soon as they touch the guest. Grounding helps remove inflammation, increase circulation, and is especially beneficial withing the treatment room having so many electrical units. It's a lot of EMF that's getting kicked up in each treatment room.
The treatment tables are aligned with infrared heat, so as the guest lies on the treatment table, they are also getting infrared treatment and negative ions. It allowed us to increase the benefit of each treatment rather than up charge everything. We spread the cost out with every single guest which allowed us to bring in good revenue while making all treatments equal. It also didn’t leave guests feeling like they were getting up charged for every little thing. We do hot stones and aromatherapy in every treatment. Instead of charging $20 for this and $20 for that, we raised it $15 to $25 depending upon what it was across the board.
As we were finishing up Se’c-he, being a lot bigger property, we have space for more amenities, so again it was that entry fee. We had a set price on what we were going to charge come into the spa. We're much larger there with 46,000 square feet. There's a lot of space to move. We had a waiting room that we converted into an acoustic wellness room, so that space now has the Mind-Sync™ acoustic chairs and Gharieni’s Welnamis and Satori chairs. Now instead of a room where a guest might flip through a magazine or watch TV while waiting for treatment, they could put the headphones on.
We incorporated a grounding room. We have a larger salt cave. We added a cold plunge in with the wet facility circuit. We looked at everything we added having its own value. Then when we looked at the price for entry, we considered that we have a hot spring. There’s a natural hot spring, but then what would a typical spa have? What would it be if you went to a location to do salt therapy? What about if you went somewhere for a grounding session or for acoustic. Everything brought in its own value, and then we found a good entry fee to be attractive while giving guests access to all the different, no touch experiences. We added two floatation pods and cryo. The flotation pods are simple because the guest floats for an hour. You don't have to worry about the pod calling out sick.
It was a lot about trends and figuring out how we would navigate it. How do we increase what we initially were looking to charge? We almost doubled what we were planning to charge for a basic spa day pass, and that's for all 110 guests that come in for the day. That's really helped.
S. Scott: We want to go down the route of touchless and just haven't figured out what's the right move for us. We have space capacity issues that we that we deal with, so we've looked at time. I recognized quite some time ago that at the end of the day, the only things that were left with the few therapists that we had on were couples massages. Instead of staying open every single day to a later time, I started closing earlier and put together a couples retreat option so people could book this custom experience which is two massages after hours and having the amenities to themselves for an hour after the massage. It includes a bottle of wine. Then there's an upgraded experience that really is the same massage but includes some additional enhancements and an artisan cheese and fruit board and a gift to take home, including two robes. That's a more premium price.
The way we do that is if it comes in by request, we have a little online form where they can book that; they can't just automatically book it online. There's a little process that they go through, and we put out a message to our therapists, and we pay a higher premium. It's a flat fee for the therapist to pick up that service, and we never have trouble getting therapists to do them because usually people are booking them well in advance.
We started that a few years ago and after some success started looking last year, how do we expand this without the therapist? We added in last fall an after hours, which is from four to eight people, no service, they just get to use the amenities. It's a very small kind of session: a couple of friends, a bachelorette party, a couple of couples, or a small family where they get to enjoy our spa amenities privately. They can add on beverages; they can add on food. It takes very few staff to be able to do it.
We build in decent gratuities, like a $40 gratuity for our front house staff, so we don't get into a schedule argument. We have a system in place. If it gets booked, and the schedule is already there, if you're a closer, you're staying an hour later, and you're getting 40 bucks out of it. If the schedule isn't made yet, it's going to just get built into the schedule. Over Valentine's, especially in February, I think two-thirds of the February nights we had one or the other booked for the whole month, which is just this great add-on revenue in addition to what we have during the day. And it's a cool premium service to offer.
WK: We started a recovery lounge in Montana where we took a salon space and converted it so people can come in and use the Theragun, the zero gravity chairs, do some acoustical. We’ve had some success with it. I love Daniel's idea though, of just including that with the services. I do feel we've maybe gone overboard with the add-on and enhancements. The team’s doing a great job selling them, but it does start to feel like we're nickel and diming everyone after a while. I took a few notes on that. That was really great feedback. We've also done the yielding and paying more for peak time, so it definitely has helped us get enough staff at the times that we need them.