Four Seasons Park Lane
It’s reassuring to have a system to capture after hours bookings instead of hoping guests call back when the spa is open.
A Quick and Responsive System
for Today’s Fast-Paced Spa
One of the most recognisable cities in the world,
London is simultaneously thrilling, stimulating, and
stressful. Its residents live life in the fast lane, yet there
is an energy about the city that makes it enjoyable.
Right in the middle of the hustle and bustle is the
Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane. The hotel
is renowned for establishing a balance of design and
luxury with modernity and sophistication—just like
London itself.
Taffryn Ellis
Spa Director at Four Seasons Park Lane
The hotel’s primary goal is to ensure the comfort of its guests, and nothing says comfort like a luxurious spa.
The rooftop Park Lane Spa is just as busy as the hotel and surrounding city, but once our guests walk through
the doors, they can take things as slowly as they want.
I began my role as Spa Director in the spring of 2018, and I immediately saw it was different from any other spa
where I’d worked. Many hotels, especially Four Seasons properties, are more like resorts and have a quieter,
more laid back atmosphere. But there’s a constant hum of activity that accompanies a property based in a city
centre. I love the excitement and energy that comes from working in a place that never stops moving.
if you want to make spa guests as comfortable as possible as quickly as possible, you need a fast and easy system to enable that.
A system that wasn’t up to the task
Even if they love being in the centre of the action,
our guests come here to step out of the fast lane,
however briefly. That means we have a constant
influx of people who we want to make as comfortable
as possible as quickly as possible, so our staff needs
to have a fast and easy system to enable that.
Unfortunately, the system they had in place when I
arrived couldn’t keep up with our users or our guests.
The software wasn’t intuitive, and it was challenging
to navigate. The basic task of booking a treatment
could take up to 15 minutes—three times longer
than it should. The system was also slow. Our staff
would sometimes compensate by rushing to get
guest information but would often miss some of
those details, which we needed to optimise the guest
experience.
From a management perspective, there were
massive gaps in knowledge about the business.
The reports weren’t nearly as detailed as I needed
to determine the best paths forward, and I couldn’t
even answer basic questions: What was the busiest
hour of the day? How many treatments were there
during those hours? There was no way for me to get
that information from the system, so we continued
to operate in the dark.
An Easy Switch to Better Software
After speaking with Spa Directors at other Four
Seasons properties, I learned that some used
Book4Time to manage their facilities. I dug into
this particular software and found that it was a
significant improvement to our existing system.
My primary goal was to find something that would
give me the in-depth reporting and analysis required
to determine the services we needed, the appropriate
amount of staff, whether we had the right products,
and what our customers really thought about our
offerings. Book4Time revealed this data in a simple,
straightforward way.
Because Book4Time was already in place at other
Four Seasons spas, we already had proof of its
benefits. It was an easy sell—Once I demonstrated
how easy it was to obtain managerial data within
a few clicks, my manager approved the switch. By
August 2018, the Book4Time rollout was underway.
Most of the physical setup happened remotely, and
the migration of information from our old software
was seamless. For training, Book4Time placed an
agent on site to assist us for a few days. She held
dedicated training sessions for different roles,
including receptionists to therapists. As the Spa
Director, I use a separate section of the system,
and the agent engaged in 1:1 training with me so I
could learn the best way to generate a wide range of
reports. The various training sessions gave everyone
time to get hands-on experience and ask questions
pertaining to their use case. We all felt prepared
when we went live.
Personalised attention goes a long way to making people comfortable in a busy environment.
Translating the Frenetic Buzz Into A Relaxing Experience
Using a new system always requires a leap of faith,
but once we started to use Book4Time daily, we
were certain we had made the right decision. Today,
Book4Time is the foundation for most of what we do
at the spa, and we have a wide range of use cases,
including:
- Checking in and checking out guests
- Booking treatments
- Quickly determining occupancy rates at any given point in time
- Managing gift cards
One of the most exciting features is customer notes.
It can be difficult to provide personal touches that
make a guest feel special in such a fast-paced
environment. Any staff member can leave notes in
Book4Time, allowing therapists to create a more
personalised experience for guests. For example, if
someone prefers a particular scent or tea, we can
note that preference and immediately offer what
they like during their next visit. This attention goes a
long way to making people comfortable, and no one
has to remember a thing.
Comprehensive customer analytics tells us more
about our best customers, including details on a
customer’s gender. Many of our guests are Middle
Eastern and we have created separate gender
facilities, each with different products. Having more
guest information at our fingertips in a way that is
easy to query and digest makes it a lot easier to plan
accordingly
Improved Efficiency, Operations, and Support
I’ve come to rely on various administrative features—
especially the reporting capabilities—to understand
what is working, what isn’t working, and to analyse
where we can improve. Book4Time has more than 40
reports and analytics to analyse appointments and
busy periods in addition to customer-specific analytics.
If we wanted to make changes to the menu before,
we had to take it up the corporate chain of command.
Once they approved the changes, we’d then update
the website. Now, we can manage the website
through Book4Time and quickly modify services
information based on inventory or seasonality.
Book4Time has increased the flexibility of the spa to
respond to guest needs as they change.
One of my favourite aspects is the ability to pull reports
based on revenue, dollar spend, and type of guest. This
information provides a much clearer path to where we
could focus and how we can improve. It’s also easier
to communicate spa information to management, who
don’t have a spa background. When an executive asks
me to assess or quantify a particular aspect of the
business, it only takes me a few minutes to generate a
report and send it for their review, including reliable data
to back up my decisions and action steps.
Book4Time’s support is just as flexible as the platform.
We rely on the built-in help and information feature. If
we can’t find what we need there, the company is always
quick to respond to our request for help resolving an
issue. The company is also willing to add or change
a feature in the platform to meet our specific needs if
there is sufficient demand. I never expected this level
of customisation, and it’s a real selling point for the
software. We’ve seen examples of this during the
pandemic. Book4Time has introduced several add-ons
to facilitate activities like self check-in to reduce contact
and keep guests flowing through a facility.
Staff Performance and Retention
I underestimated how Book4Time would help us
manage our staff and gauge their performance. I
can query the most and least requested therapists,
the biggest (and smallest) tips, and individual
therapist’s retail sales. Using this data, I can identify
people who may need more attention to improve
their performance.
Our top priority is to keep guests comfortable, but we
want our staff to feel supported in this high-demand
space, too. We want to nurture our therapists and
encourage their professional development, and
Book4Time shows me the best way to dedicate time
to my staff. Ultimately, we want to retain our best and
brightest through positive reinforcement. We don’t
have to rely on guest surveys and questionnaires
about their experience with staff because we have
the data that conveys their choices and opinions.
when your top priority is to keep guests comfortable, it’s important to remember that staff needs to be supported, too.
Peace of Mind Amidst a Whirlwind of Activity
Even when we aren’t actively using Book4Time, we know
it’s there. Over the past year, we’ve seen a significant
uptick in online booking. Many of these bookings come
in after hours, and it’s reassuring to have a system to
capture those appointments instead of hoping guests
call back when the spa is open.
Book4Time integrates with our hotel system, but apart
from that, we don’t use any other platforms at the spa. We
don’t have to. I now have access to detailed information
in minutes (if not seconds), which allows us to keep up
with the demands of the city pace of Park Lane Spa.