Couples are a significant audience for spas, especially on Valentine's Day, so it is essential to have a wide array of spa and wellness offerings designed for couples. These tips will make your spa’s couples’ treatments more enticing and successful.
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Couples are a significant audience for spas, especially on Valentine's Day, so it is essential to have a wide array of spa and wellness offerings designed for couples. These tips will make your spa’s couples’ treatments more enticing and successful.
How can spas make couples’ treatments more unique?
Virginia Lara, director of spa and salon, The Spa at Encore Boston Harbor: When we strategize about our services, we always like to put ourselves in our guests’ shoes. We love to share our thoughts with each other as a team. For example, assistant manager Tiannah Rogers had a conversation she had with a couple after their spa experience: The wife asked her husband, "Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could learn how to massage each other?" She told me this during a brainstorming session, and it was no-brainer; we decided to create a package for Valentine’s Day where a couple’s massage lesson is included with the couple’s massage experience. The best decisions come along when teams work together to genuinely understand the guest experience and their needs. That’s how we make treatments unique and meaningful.
Tiffany Crosby, director of education, Hiatus Spa + Retreat, Texas: Being present, connected and intentional is the best way to make shared experiences the most memorable. Enliven the senses with textures and temperatures, aromas, soothing sounds, tastes and timing, all while being conscious of how we transition in and out of those moments, provides a unique experience.
Imagine warm shea butter with smooth, hot stones down your back and shoulders while enjoying the aromatics of sweet orange and ylang ylang; the comfort of hot towels wrapped around your feet and under your neck; the fresh exhale your nervous system experiences when the hot towels are slowly removed.
Our guests can sit next to their partner in a comfortable robe receiving a foot soak and aroma journey, while sipping tea or fruit-infused water—it is pure magic! After treatment, they snuggle up together in the relaxation area with some champagne, which allows them to process and truly be with each other in these experiences.
What wellness elements align well with couples’ treatments?
Crosby: In holistic wellness, each element—fire, water, earth, air—is connected to different functioning aspects of the body and mind. Working with the elements addresses healing and rejuvenation in the mind, body and spirit. For example, the warmth of fire can be experienced via hot towels, warm oils, warm lighting, specific movements to calm fire energy. All of these work with our muscles, meridians and nervous system as well as affect the fire in our body function like our digestion and metabolism, and supports the fire of our emotions like anger or frustration.
Lara: When it comes to couples treatments, expectations are highest for receiving a memorable experience or making a tradition to look forward to every year. Body massages incorporating a common activity like co-ed water facilities or Rasul treatments are highly rated. Anything that involves both parties taking care of themselves together, or taking care of each other, creates a window of awareness toward the importance of their self-care.
An offering like our Couple’s Massage Lesson is the perfect opportunity for guests to get involved in each other’s wellness and create that healthy habit at home in between spa indulgences.
How can spas market these offerings?
Lara: It’s key to create a stellar reputation by consistently delivering exceptional services with an amazing and talented group of professionals. Word of mouth is always the most organic way to market treatments, and we also value reviews and comments. We also promote specials on our website every month, and we deliver this information to anyone who has signed into our Wynn Rewards program.
Keep in mind that in most spas with couples’ treatment spaces in their facilities, that area is usually less than 1% of their entire available space; this means these treatments are in high demand. Recommend that they are booked in advance, especially during times like Valentine’s Day.
Crosby: Couples are looking for experiences, so it’s important to speak into the whole experience in a way that takes them on a journey and creates value. In the descriptions, leading with the "why" is most important. Connect people to the purpose, describe the details in a way that is enthralling, visualizing and offering true value with price in a direct and clear way.
We get guests curious by posting on social media, sending out the information in our newsletter and creating space in our retail area to share descriptions of our promotions. Plus, we are sure to chat about it and get people scheduled while they are already in the spa.
