The key to the customer experience is supporting your employees and sharing your vision By Vivienne O’Keeffe   It was every spa’s nightmare: a client suffering a medical emergency. As bad as the experience was for the customer felled by a seizure, it was certainly no picnic for the staff caught in a haze of frenzied interactions between paramedics and the client’s family. I don’t mean to diminish the harm caused by any physical impairment. But...

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Spa, heal thyself. We’re great at getting toxins out of our clients. Now let’s get them out of our workplaces. By Vivienne O’Keeffe You’d think an industry singularly focused on helping people survive the deleterious effects of modern living would itself be a model of health and harmony. Instead, factors including increased demand, stress, fatigue and exhaustion are eating at the heart of many of today’s spas – and doing so at a time when the...

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Smart companies are using new insights into neurological connectivity to market health and beauty products. Luckily, spas have a built-in advantage. By Vivienne O’Keeffe When he started his wine store in Ireland some 50 years ago, my dad knew all about neurological connectivity. Of course he never called it that because the term didn’t exist. What he did was greet his customers by name, shake their hand or pat their back, and hold the...

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If the 2017 Global Wellness Summit was any indication, we’re finally catching on. By Vivienne O’Keeffe   Freedom from preventable disease Feeling victimized by the pervasive bad news and constant chirping that seem to characterize life today? It’s hard not to be. But after coming away from the annual Summit of the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) in Palm Beach, Florida – and its theme of disease prevention – my battered outlook has...

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Cozying up to tech can help your spa business. But not too close. Last November, the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas introduced an unusual new team member to welcome guests. Pepper – a robot with big bird eyes and an endearingly petite stature – can assess gender, age, facial, body and voice cues, and even mood, then customize ‘her’ verbal greetings to each guest. It’s not hard to imagine how a Spa Pepper could put repeat clients at ease by...

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Without a top-to-bottom commitment to delivering an authentic experience, your spa business could run out of gas By Vivienne O’Keeffe The good news is that U.S. spa visits surpassed 180 million for the first-time last year, an annual increase of 2.5 per cent. Income also set a new record of $16.8 billion, up 3.1 per cent, with the total number of spa businesses up 1.1 per cent. The bad news? If sinking morale and staff shortages aren’t...

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