Demand for spa and wellness experiences has increased dramatically. But implementing wellness programs at a hotel or resort can come with challenges.
Implementing wellness programs at a hotel or resort can be a lucrative endeavor. Most seasoned professionals know this by now. Demand for spa and wellness experiences has increased dramatically in recent years and it makes sense to give consumers what they want.
But implementing these wellness initiatives can be a complex process, and there are some challenges hospitality businesses may face launching new programs or managing existing ones. Fortunately, many of these challenges are easily overcome with good planning, strategy, and software support.
Some of the challenges associated with implementing and running wellness programs at your hotel or resort include the following:
Challenge
Cost: Incorporating wellness into a hotel or resort may require a significant investment of time and money. This can include renovating or building new facilities, recruiting and hiring trained staff, and implementing new technologies.
Solutions
Start small, with a few basic wellness offerings, such as yoga or meditation classes, before expanding to more complex offerings. You can gradually increase the scale as you build a customer base and generate revenue. Make use of existing space in your hotel or resort, like outdoor areas or underutilized rooms, for wellness activities. Offer poolside and cabana massages.
Partner with local wellness providers, like yoga studios or spas, if you don’t have space for a spa of your own, to offer services at your hotel or resort. This can save on the cost of hiring your own instructors or building your own facilities.
Use technology to offer in-room, virtual wellness classes, and online yoga or meditation sessions, which can be less expensive than in-person classes.
Choose a software system that offers user permissions at different levels and scalability to manage your onsite activities so you can add more users as you scale up. Use software for yield management to avoid wasting money and losing revenue with low occupancy and uptake, and for inventory management so you only spend on what you’re certain you need.
Challenge
Staffing: Staffing in hospitality is already a massive challenge. Finding and training staff for wellness programs can also be difficult.
Solutions
Treat your team members like your internal guests. Don’t try to save by lowballing on wages and benefits. Top talent is worth it and you wind up paying more with high turnover than you would with people who stay.
Offer career advancement opportunities, training programs, certifications, and mentoring, to encourage staff to stay with your company long term. Create a positive work environment, don’t burn people out, and focus on onboarding, and education. Partner with local schools to offer internships, apprenticeships, and job-shadowing programs. Create employee referral programs that reward existing staff for referring new hires.
Use technology. Make sure your spa and ancillary revenue software is easy to use and helps streamline and automate administrative tasks, such as scheduling and payroll, so that staff can focus on customer service and other high-value activities.
Challenge
Marketing: Promoting wellness offerings to guests can be a challenge. Hotels and resorts may need to develop new marketing strategies to make customers aware of their new wellness offerings.
Solutions
Up your marketing efforts, focusing on your wellness offerings. Leverage social media, encourage customer reviews, implement a referral program, host events, collaborate with influencers, and focus on SEO.
Create a dedicated page on your website highlighting your wellness offerings. Build an online booking site for your spa, classes, and activities and promote it with QR codes placed throughout your property. You’ll find many more marketing ideas here.
Challenge
Integration with existing payment systems. A property could have challenges collecting payment for services and classes without a dedicated system for doing so.
Solutions
Choose a software to manage your wellness departments that integrates with your existing point of sale system/s or even offers their own POS – like Book4Time. That way, all of your ancillary revenue is covered and guests can pay at checkout, rather than having to pay separately for any wellness activities or services. Moreover, Book4Time captures a credit card at time of booking, reducing revenue losses from cancellations and no shows.
Challenge
Measuring return on investment (ROI): Measuring the success of wellness programs can be difficult. As Accor’s Emlyn Brown told Spa Executive in a 2021 interview, “The idea of measuring ROI is sometimes a difficult one. We always take a strong stance to ensure financial feasibility and understanding of the market when creating new wellbeing facilities within our hotels. But now that people have a more sophisticated understanding of what creates success, I think that the overall ROI on wellbeing needs a stronger measurement.”
Solutions
Reframe the meaning of ROI. Emlyn Brown said, “For me, the measurement is what I would call the ‘drive and aspiration’ to visit a property and the attractiveness of wellness and wellbeing activity. It’s a bit of a non-tangible discussion, but what makes a person actually click through and book a hotel? The aspirations to participate in health and wellbeing, spa experiences, and recreational activities are important drivers for properties to attract guests. If you look at the reasons why consumers actually visit properties or become loyal to certain brands, you’ll find that wellness plays a very important role.”
As for measuring actual, financial ROI from wellness, Book4Time software’s reports and dashboards are the best in the industry, allowing you to track KPIs and see all of your metrics at a glance and in one place.
Careful planning and execution, and Book4Time’s software solutions will help overcome these challenges so you and your guests can get the most out of your hotel or resort’s wellness programming.
