The self-serving spa,

an online booking whitepaper

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Table of Contents
Executive summary 3

The value of online booking 4

Phone booking is expensive for you to maintain 4

Growth of online booking 5

Millennials, an untapped target audience 6

Millennials are taking over the market, and they dont make phone calls

Make money while you sleep 6

Todays customers want the option to book online 7

Conclusion 8
Can you afford to continue doing what youre doing?

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Executive Summary
Spa and Wellness is lagging in the adoption of online booking and this lag is costing businesses in revenue,
probably much more than is realized.

In many parts of the world, its practically unheard of to find a hotel that doesnt offer some form of online
booking functionality. And by some estimates, approximately 80% of holiday bookings are made online.
In the spa and wellness industry, it all begins with the booked appointment, and the customer experience
while booking that appointment will set the tone for the relationship going forward. Managing this process
successfully is key to business success in this world. Todays consumer wants to book appointments at their own
convenience, and if they cant, they will go elsewhere.

Examining the various ways in which appointments are booked, we can find inconveniences with each of
following methods:

In person appointment booking requires dedicated resources managing the front desk, leaving other duties
to be tended too as and when opportunity arises.
Phone booking creates the same time barrier, research shows it is also unappealing to the younger adult
generation. Call centers come into play when booking with larger organizations an off-putting experience
in almost every situation. There is also the extended call on-hold, already creating a bad customer
experience. At best, a customer may be irritable by the time the appointment is booked. At worst, they will
go elsewhere

In this white paper, we will look at current online booking statistics and future projections. We will discuss how
spas who do not offer online booking are more likely to lose out on revenue and customers to their competitors,
we will also demonstrate how easy it is to fix these problems.

We will also look at some ways in which spas can improve their customer experience even if they do offer
online booking functionality.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

The value of online booking

It is unrealistic to expect a customer who is trying at 11p.m. to book a massage appointment for the following day
to wait a full ten hours until 9a.m. the next morning. This will lead to new customers going elsewhere and booking
with someone who offers online booking. New customers will be lost forever. An established customer may be
convinced to return, but its well known that the cost of winning back a lost customer is far more than the cost of
retaining an existing customer.

There is also evidence that people spend more online. Book4Times team found that people spent an average day-
spa ticket price of $120.44 when booking online versus $105.92 when booking by phone or in person, a nearly 14%
spend differential.

According to the 2016 ISPA U.S. Spa Industry Study2, 68% of spas said they had an online booking option in
2015, up from 54% in 2014, and leaving 32% of spas who still dont offer online booking functionality. Are these
businesses losing revenue because of this failure to adopt? The research says yes.

Phone booking is expensive

for you to maintain
Phone bookings are costly, not only in staffing but in hours also. Book4Times research team has found that, on
average it takes approximately 10 minutes for the front desk to book an appointment.

If you have to manually book 5000 appointments a year, evenly across 365 days that means your offline
booking process requires approximately 2 1/2 hours a day or 833.3 hours a year - in employee labour alone.

This time could be put to better use on other tasks, like guest services and upselling. Online booking facilitates
business efficiencies, it streamlines data entry and payments, and reduces excessive time spent rectifying errors or
dealing with lengthy phone calls. It also allows larger organizations to plan staffing schedules more accurately and
assist in consolidating bookings in a central location.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Growth of online booking

One quarter of bookings are made online, and this figure will grow

Looking at data from thousands of top spas worldwide, Book4Times research team found that a quarter (23%) of
combined salon, hotel spa, and day spa bookings are made online. And these bookings also account for a quarter
(23.3%) of salon, hotel spa, and day spa revenue.

And these numbers have not reached their apex. There is ample evidence that the figures will increase. Research
released in June 2016 found that shoppers now make more than half - 51% - of their purchases online, compared to
48% in 2015 and 47% in 20143. an increase that is being driven largely by millennials4.

Furthermore, a 2016 study published by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 80% of Americans do at least some
shopping online, with 42% doing so from several times a week to a few times a month.5

With a worldwide e-commerce growth of 19.9% from 2014-2015, it is undeniable that spa and
wellness should strongly consider implementing and or refining technology solutions such as
online booking systems6.

Region 2014 2015 Growth

World $1,895.3bn $2,272.7bn +19.9%

Asia-Pacific $822.8bn 1,056.8bn +28.4%

North America $572.5bn $644.0bn +12.5%

Europe $446.0bn $505.1bn +13.3%

Latin America $25.8bn $33.0bn +28.0%

MENA $21.7bn $25.8bn +18.6%

* Growth based upon national currencies.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Millennials, an untapped target

Millennials are taking over the market, and they dont make phone calls

Combine this online purchasing information with data about the growing millennial market: Millennials make up more
than a quarter of the global population and represent about a third of retail sales. And they dont use phones to make
actual calls. Research conducted in 2016 by OpenMarket found that, given the choice between only being able to text
or call on their mobile phones, 75% of millennials would rather lose the ability to talk versus text, and 76% said they
prefer
Same texts over calls
Title Here from companies. Fifty-three
Same Title percentHere
said they prefer to text vs call in general, and 19% never
check voicemail7.

Meanwhile ISPAs Consumer Snapshot Volume VII, Millennial Perceptions and Preferences8 found that a majority of
millennials are spa goers and that nearly half of them did not book their last appointment by phone.

When asked, Thinking about your most recent visit to a spa, how did you book an appointment? 40% of respondents
booked by phone and 17% booked in person. Of the remainder:

24% booked via website on a laptop or PC

7% booked via social media
4% booked via mobile app
8% booked via website via smartphone or tablet

Thats a total of 43% of millennial respondents who used web or mobile technology, rather than a phone, to make their
appointments.
Same Title Here Same Title Here
As this younger generation matures and becomes more affluent, this market will grow and become an even larger share
of your customer base. Millennials are the fastest growing market, and you cannot ignore this. There is no avoiding a
future in which customers will not be calling you to book an appointment, and will go elsewhere to avoid what they
regard as an unnecessary inconvenience. Same Title Here

Make money while you sleep

Meanwhile, online booking can literally make you money while you sleep or enjoy your life outside of work. Our data
showed us that 9.6% of customers are booking appointments outside of business hours and that 6.1% of revenue is
booked when the spa is closed. For the average spa with a potential to do $1.5M in annual revenue, this represents
$91,500 in lost business when the spa is closed.

Todays consumers are sophisticated, demanding, and accustomed to getting what they want at their convenience. They
hate waiting. Time is a precious commodity to your customers.

When Amazon analyzed its sales ratio to its web performance, they found that with every page-load delay of 100
milliseconds there was a one per cent reduction in conversions. Thats fractions of seconds. Similarly, Walmart saw a two
per cent increase in conversion rates for every one-second improvement in page-load times on their ecommerce site9.

Ergo: you cant expect people to wait until morning for you to be open. They wont.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Todays customers want the

option to book online
Todays consumers are tech savvy. A 2015 survey of patients and their booking preferences with medical providers
found that 17% had scheduled a doctors appointment via a website or app within the previous year, and an
additional 42% said they would have scheduled an appointment online but that the opportunity was not available
to them10.

Spa owners might be concerned about scaring away existing, or older, customers. People come to trust what they
know, and your clients are used to booking with you by phone or in person. Allow those customers to continue to
use your phone system. You may find, however, that many will convert to online booking anyway.

If you already offer online booking, could the experience be even better?

Simply implementing the technology is a great start. Once you have, consider the following:

Is it easy for people to access your online booking?

If your spa booking system is on a hotel home page is it visible and not lost in the hotel menu?
Is your menu tailored for online use, are all treatments and therapies described in full detail and easy-to-
understand language?
Are there images illustrating your treatments?
Is your process easy and hassle free?
Does your online system integrate with your marketing and social media campaigns and can customers
purchase online or redeem coupons and discount codes?

This last point may be less obvious but it is imperative. When a customer has a gift card, coupon, or discount code,
the first place they will go to look at what is on offer is online. Offering the option to book an appointment for
the service right then and there is simply good customer service. Similarly, if a customer finds their way to a spas
website through social media, offering the option to book online is the logical thing to do.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

Conclusion
Can you afford to continue doing what youre doing?

We have demonstrated that not having online booking costs you in staff hours and does not reflect the needs of
millennials, the worlds fastest growing market. It also costs you the dollars of customers who want to do their
appointment booking outside of business hours.

Meanwhile, online booking functionality offers convenience and choices to your valued clients, increases revenues,
and helps close the loop with your marketing campaigns, gift cards and coupons. The cost of implementing this
functionality is a fraction of what you will gain.

If your booking process isnt in line with the needs of todays customers, the status quo is no longer an option.
Keeping up with innovation is key to a successful business in the current spa and salon market.

Remember that technology is advancing and your client needs are evolving. You need to evolve along with them.

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The self-serving spa, an online booking whitepaper

80% booking holidays online, finds study

1

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/41280/80-booking-holidays-online-finds-study

2
2016 US Spa Industry Study
http://experienceispa.com/images/pdfs/2016-US-Spa-Industry-Study-02-SEPT.pdf

3
Consumers Are Now Doing Most of Their Shopping Online
http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/online-shopping-increases/

4
Millennials drive spike in online shopping
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/06/08/survey-more-than-half-purchases-made-online/85592598/

5
As Online Sales Boom, Is Brick-and-Mortar on the Way Out?
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/19/online-shopping-and-purchasing-preferences/

6
Global B2C E-commerce Report 2016
https://www.ecommercewiki.org/wikis/www.ecommercewiki.org/images/5/56/Global_B2C_Ecommerce_Report_2016.pdf

OpenMarket Survey/Infographic Reveal Millennials Prefer Texting But Marketers Miss The Boat
7

http://www.adotas.com/2016/04/openmarket-surveyinfographic-reveal-millennials-prefer-texting-but-marketers-miss-the-boat/

8
http://experienceispa.com/blog/item/new-ispa-research-released

9
How Website Speed Affects Conversion Rates
http://www.globaldots.com/how-website-speed-affects-conversion-rates/

10 Reasons You Should Offer Online Appointment Scheduling

10

https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/10/online-appointment-scheduling.html

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 book4time.com
media@book4time.com

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