Millennials are the fastest growing global market and more than half of them are spa goers. If you don’t allow them to book online they will go somewhere else.
Does your spa or salon offer online booking functionality? If not, you are going to alienate the fastest growing market: millennials.
The generation born between 1977-2000 (give or take a few years, depending on who you’re speaking to) makes up more than a quarter of the global population, represents about a third of retail sales, and by 2025 they will represent 75% of the global workforce.
Millennials don’t make phone calls
So, it’s probably best to pay attention to what they do and don’t want. And one thing they don’t want is to call you on the phone. Millennials use phones for all kinds of things, but they don’t use them to make actual phone calls.
Research conducted in 2016 by OpenMarket found that, given the choice between only being able to text or call on their mobile phones, 75% of millennials would rather lose the ability to talk versus text, and 76% said they prefer texts over calls from companies. Fifty-three percent said they prefer to text vs call in general, and 19% never check voicemail.
Nearly half of young spa goers made their last appointment without calling anyone
Meanwhile ISPA’s Consumer Snapshot Volume VII, Millennial Perceptions and Preferences found that a majority of millennials are spa goers and that nearly half of them did not book their last appointment by phone.
When asked, “Thinking about your most recent visit to a spa, how did you book an appointment?” 40% of respondents booked by phone and 17% booked in person. Of the remainder:
- 24% booked via website on a laptop or PC
- 7% booked via social media
- 4% booked via mobile app
- 8% booked via website via smartphone or tablet
That’s a total of 43% of millennial respondents who used web or mobile technology, rather than making a phone call, to make their appointments.
As this younger generation matures and becomes more affluent, this market will grow and become an even larger share of your customer base. You cannot ignore this. There is no avoiding a future in which customers will not be calling you to book an appointment, and will go elsewhere to avoid what they regard as an unnecessary inconvenience.
The easiest way to avoid that happening is to implement online booking, which saves time and money and will keep customers happy through 2025 and beyond.
Download The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper, to learn about how you can save money with online booking.
Learn more about online booking at Book4Time.com. Book4Time offers secure cloud-based spa software solutions to help spa and salon management handle online spa booking, spa reporting, customer communications, and much more all in one place.
