Starting A Spa Business Strategies

The idea of starting a spa business and owning our own health spa arose from three main motivations: to let people know about the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, working in a truly stimulating, beautiful environment and the freedom one gets by being your own boss.  The fact that one can, if successful, earn a good income was clearly not overlooked but is indeed the most uncertain issue as it depends on a number of influences, which one can only partially or not control at all (e.g. a general economic crisis).  In contrast, the first three facts will always be part of your lifestyle as a spa owner and are there to stay! Let’s look at those a bit more in detail.

The origins and milestones of the development can be found HERE

I was lucky enough to learn healthy living from my father who inspired me after my teenage years to follow in his tracks. The mere fact that he conquered the dreaded aging with his active, high quality lifestyle far into his eighties motivated me finally to plan and implement the holistic health spa idea, together with my wife. She had experienced the opposite with her father: his untimely death in his early sixties, which was clearly linked to a much less healthy living pattern.  Teaching our guests the three pillars of good health “Optimal nutrition” – “Regular, situation adapted exercising” - “Mindful relaxation”, all based on my deeply rooted conviction – very different to acquired theoretical, literature knowledge! – of the benefits of healthy living, always gave me a feeling of making a valuable contribution to society. In the majority of cases, this feeling was amplified by happy and regularly returning guests.

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To live and work in a health spa is certainly a privilege, in spite of all the hard work it requires to get and keep the place in top shape.  The smell of aroma oils and the sound of spiritual music in the rooms and relaxation areas, the availability of herbal teas and light snacks and salads throughout the day, and the possibility of enjoying inhouse fitness center, sauna annd steam bath (and even a massage from time to time), which employer can compete with such an environment? Strangely enough, not all staff members did always appreciate these privileges.  Although such applies mostly to the younger ones who had not yet experienced other work places.

There is no need to say too much about the value of personal freedom, when being your own employer.  Any spa or salon of whatever size offers this freedom of making your own decisions, and it is my believe, this fact on its own is worth to create such a place, if you are attracted by health and beauty matters.  Yet freedom is inherently linked to responsibility – two different sides of the same medal! – , which one should not overlook: responsibility towards clients as well as staff.  It is very obvious that only when such responsibility is taken seriously by the owner, a spa operation can be successful in the long run as the image of the establishment is directly proportional to the responsibility practiced by the owner(s).

The chapter  “Guest Services” of the ebook is accessible here.

In conclusion, the day I knew that I would dedicate all my energy to creating my health spa vision and actively starting into my spa business was the beginning of an incredible challenge, well knowing that the rewards one day will by far exceed the blood, sweat and tears needed to make the business a success story.

If you would like to learn about the 7 strategies for a successful spa operation, we invite you to subscribe to our mini e-course on the right sidebar. As our appreciation for your interest and subscription, you will receive the spa planning and benchmarking software, which are part of our eBook “Spa Success Strategies”, completely free of charge for immediate download.

Estate agents tell you that only three issues matter when buying a real estate: location, location, location.  The reason is obvious: once you have it, this is it – no correction possible!

If you are planning to start a spa business, I would square the above said as a wrong location can be detrimental, if not disastrous to your business in the medium to long term. Why is that?  Because spa visitors today have a pretty distinct expectation about the experience  during their visit, which is detemined not only by the treatment but the whole setup, including the spa surroundings. This expectation obviously depends on the kind of spa visited and will be different for hotel, destination, day and medical spas, just to name four of the major spa types.

Therefore it is necessary to put as much diligence and intelligence into that matter as possible taking into account not only your vision of your future spa but the competition situation in your area too.  If their is an established competitor within reach of your future clients, you better think twice if you can outrank him in spite of the saying “competition is good for the business”. It’s is always safer to start from the pole position, not only in Formula 1!

But there may still be something unexpected lurking in the background. When we bought our destination spa premises after over 9 months of carefully going through the selection process, we thought we had found the golden egg and stayed in that belief, while the business was developing.

Yet, after three years, when we had a well established business and the time had come to enter into phase 2, the extension of our room offering from 14 to 25, we unexpectedly hit the wall.  We learned that the zoning regulations in our basically residential area allowed only for those 14 rooms, more would require the approval of all (!) neighbours around us, more than 12 individuals. This was a killer requirement as more than one neighbour already had uttered openly his dissatisfaction with the traffic caused by our clients. So our hopes for multiplying our income had come to an abrupt halt.

Life tends to come up with surprises, for better or for worse. In this case clearly for worse.  Yet, I can’t dismiss the thought that we could have avoided this happening, if we would have investigated this issue more thoroughly before buying the property.

I believe this real life example illustrates quite well, what I mean with applying much diligence in location and object selection. Your spa business will depend decisively on your choice. More about this topic you can find  in www.spasuccessstrategies.com.

Before any owner of a new spa business should dive into the nitty gritty of all the necessities to get the spa operation off the ground, there must be an intensive phase of brainstorming about the vision and the requirements for its implementation. It is strongly recommended that, only after this process is finished, one should start looking for the place, where such vision can be materialized.

In my case, the brainstorming phase lasted not hours or days but weeks and months because my ambition was to create something new, non-existing in South Africa at that time: a 5 star holistic destination spa.  And only when the first foggy ideas became more and more concrete, the time had come to start looking for a suitable location and object, which reflected this vision as much as possible.  We investigated more than 20 objects in various provinces before we succeeded.

Because haste in making the location decision can lead to the realization soon afterwards that the original vision can not be implemented or must be abolished, as the place does not match at all, what the vision was all about in the first place. Example:  if you acquire a plot at the border of a forest for your “Pure Nature Spa” and 2 years later, a shopping center pops up in your neighbourhood, your vision of a nature spa has become quickly obsolete.

So my advice is: take your time, as the decisions you make in those early days of your new venture will determine the character of  your spa business and will lay the foundation for its future success.