WHERE wellness MEANS BUSINESS

The World Spa & Wellness Convention is returning to London ExCeL on February 24–25, bringing you the latest facts, igures and trends set to impact your spa operation in the coming year. The programme has been redesigned with two core streams – Stream A: The business of spa, providing solutions to help operators tackle issues; and Stream 1: Wellness, which focuses on improving outcomes for clients as a key to customer acquisition and retention.

Also new are the “Situation Rooms”, which focus on solving real business challenges. Delegates can join roundtables with experts dealing with the same issues. Here are three key trends at the convention…

New wellness KPIs

In the “What are investors really looking for when it comes to wellness, spa and beauty investments?” session on Monday, February 25, panellists will discuss how to attract investors in a competitive market.

“I intend to challenge the methods of measuring success in the current inancial models that have been based on hospitality accounting, asking, ‘are they still relevant and fair in the measurement of wellness service providers?’,” explains panellist Andrew Gibson of Sensei Private Equity, formerly director of spa at Accor Group. He will be joined by Tim Leach, managing director of investor Baylor Klein, and Paria Ghorashi Rai, founder of BGX – Blow Out & Go.

Fitness gets personal

Kent Richards, corporate director of operations at Six Senses, will be discussing this issue in the “Vitality and movement – integrating itness into your business model” panel on Sunday, February 24. “Fitness is an important dimension of wellness and joins spas and many other elements to form what is now a US$4 trillion global wellness industry,” says Richards. “Some spas have great itness facilities but many need to provide more varied and personalised offerings.”

Richards and panellists Thomas Klein, president and chief operating oficer at Canyon Ranch, and Donna Cyrus, president of Cyrus Fit, will focus on the challenges of combining the two.

Looking outside for inspiration

Ira Malik, group spa director at Minor Hotels, is one of three experts chairing the “Managing a strategic turnaround” Situation Room on Monday, February 25. “Identifying early warning signs through a combination of rigorous analytics and understanding of macro indicators is critical,” says Malik.

She says spas could learn from other industries, citing fast-food chain McDonald’s as an example: “It introduces new items for a limited time to create a talking point and attract guests to try.”