Forget Summer Classes in the Heat, Take Spa Management Online Year Round with ISM

It’s difficult enough going to school, going to work, and dealing with the issues of your everyday life, but add a little summer heat and it can be downright impossible to get motivated about your education. So, rather than taking classes in a hot and stuffy classroom, why not advance your career by taking spa management courses online in the air-conditioned comfort of your own home?

The Institute of Spa Management (ISM) offers online classes year-round, making it easier than ever to achieve your goals quickly and easily. Whether you are new to the spa industry or a seasoned spa professional, ISM has a program for you.

At ISM you can choose the all-inclusive Spa Management course that covers all areas of spa management, including finance, public relations, client services, marketing, and more. At the end of the course you will be fully qualified to fill any spa management position available.

You can also take individual courses, such as conflict management, human resources, customer service, and others. It’s up to you how you want to spend your summer months, but spending it advancing your career goals with ISM in the comfort of your own home makes it easier than ever.

Support and Encourage Your Spa Staff: In Turn, They Will Deliver Exceptional Client Services

You’ve heard the old adage, treat people the way you would like to be treated. This doesn’t just apply to your clients, it also applies to your staff. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook your employees on a day to day basis. While you might truly appreciate the work that they do, there is no substitute for actually showing it or saying it in some form or fashion.

If your employees don’t feel appreciated or supported they may lose interest in doing a good job. This will only come back to hurt you because unhappy employees will create unhappy clients and this is not good for any business. So, what you need to do is set aside a specific time every day or every week to make sure you are truly encouraging and supporting the wants and needs of your staff, just as you would for your clients.

This might mean having weekly staff meetings, creating an open door policy where employees can come to you without fear of repercussions, providing regular training, developing individual goals, or even just having a pizza party once a month to let everyone blow off some steam. Remember, happy employees will make for happy clients.

Getting Back to Management Basics is the Best Way to Get Your Spa Business Back on Track (K.I.S.S)

When running your spa you can easily find yourself forgetting about the basics when it comes to managing your business and your people. Therapies change, complications arrive, theories evolve, but you need to make sure that you don’t get so carried away that you forget the basics that probably served you well before things got complicated.
What this means is not losing sight of the basic goal of business management, getting things done through skilled leadership, organization, communication, and planning. When carried out properly, using your basic management skills will effectively run or help any business.

This means applying the KISS principle to any business model or situation. An acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid, it is meant to remind you that no matter how complicated things get, you can always address or solve problems by using simple methods. In other words, the best solution is usually the easiest or least complicated one.

Even if your spa business seems to be spiraling out of control, you can probably get it back on track again by keeping it basic and keeping it simple. Over complicating things in business, as in life, usually just leads to more complications and fewer resolutions.

The Day of a Spa Employee: Busy, Hectic and Non-Stop…

Think About Proper Footwear

As a day spa employee your days can be long, hard, busy, and hectic. Whether you’re the spa manager, therapist, or receptionist you can spend the whole day running around or on your feet without a break. Not taking care of your feet can lead to poor posture, stress, physiological changes to the feet, and other medical conditions, so it’s important that you wear shoes that soothe and protect your feet rather than torture them.

While most of us want to look both professional and fashionable while we are at work, we also need to consider safety and comfort, particularly when it comes to footwear. Of course, orthopedic shoes are not generally known for their fashion sense, but they have come a long way. There are now plenty of shoes available out there that are comfortable, safe, and fashionable.

When buying work shoes, look for ones that have non-slip soles, quality padding, good arch support, a firm heel counter, a rigid or semi-rigid shank, removable insole, and allow your toes to wiggle. If your feet feel good all day, then you will feel good too which will make everyone around you as relaxed, comfortable, and stress-free as your feet are.

Progressive Management through Quality Education (Without Leaving Home): Think ISM

In business, particularly the spa business, things are always changing, evolving, and moving forward on a day to day basis. What used to be popular or the norm yesterday may no longer be the norm today. So, it is essential that you keep abreast of the latest news, ideas, and methods that are being used in the spa industry today. The best way to do this is to continuously educate yourself as to what is happening in the spa industry, but who has the time?

At the Institute of Spa Management (ISM), you always have the time to learn the latest about spa management and improve your leadership skills through their online learning courses. Whether you are looking to get into the spa industry or are a seasoned professional, ISM has a variety of different management courses that can get you up to speed or help you improve upon your current skill set. The best thing is, you don’t even need to leave home or the office to get this quality education because it is available 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, so you can study at your own pace and on your own terms.

Spa Management: How to Determine Spa Hours of Business

As you know, your spa’s business can ebb and flow from one week to the next. This is especially noticeable after the busy holiday rush. This rollercoaster of high business times and low business times can also fluctuate throughout the week and even hour by hour, so determining the best hours of operation for your spa business can be a tricky task.

Depending on where your spa is located and what the lifestyles of your surrounding client base are can dictate what your spa hours should be. Perhaps you are located in a middleclass neighborhood where most people work during the day. You will probably find that most of your spa business takes place in the evenings or on the weekends. Or you might be in an upper-class area where your business spikes in the morning and during the week due to more flexible client schedules.

You need to keep track of these trends in order to understand who your clients are and what their lifestyles are as related to your spa business. Once you determine your high times and your low times, you can set your spa hours based on these trends in order to increase your profitability.

Spa Industry News: Prominent Spas Work Hard to Go Green

The spa industry is becoming an important leader in the fight against global warming by making changes to the way spas are run in order to help save the environment. The idea of going green is one that fits perfectly with the vision that spas around the world have had for centuries.

In order to spread the word of green spa living, several prominent spas around the country have formed the Green Spa Network. This grassroots, not-for-profit trade organization has started out by creating seed spas, ones that are committed to developing and sustaining environmentally friendly business practices. To date there are nine spas in the seed program and their main focus is to find the greenest ways to run their spas while also remaining profitable and providing their clients with the best services available.

In addition the Green Spa Network is gathering as much information as they can for their Green Spa Toolkit, which will provide other spa owners the tools and information they need to turn their spas green too. They are also putting together an annual green spa conference that will serve as a networking and information exchange opportunity for those interested in going green.

Institute of Spa Management Meets the Need via Distance Education

The ISM Spa Management Program is offered via self-paced, distance education, allowing students the ability to keep a full-time job and still study towards a rewarding spa industry career. Payment plans and scholarship opportunities are available for all students.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) December 27, 2007 — The ISM Spa Management Program is offered via self-paced, distance education, allowing students the ability to keep a full-time job and still study towards a rewarding spa industry career. Payment plans and scholarship opportunities are available for all students.

Across the spa industry, in North America and around the globe, one of the greatest hurdles is figuring out how to manage clients, revenues and business growth in a competitive industry that is continually shifting, changing and evolving. There simply are not enough qualified spa managers to meet the need, and this very subject was a major topic of discussion at the Global Spa Summit in May, 2007. Offering training via distance education to students worldwide, The Institute of Spa Management is committed to educating the spa industry, one professional at a time.

In 2007, the Institute of Spa Management received more than 9,500 requests for the Spa Management Program curriculum outline; reported full enrollment for August through December, and awarded more than $40,000 in full and partial scholarships.

Abby Cavanaugh, Director of Admissions and Student Services, “It takes a trained business professional to juggle spa operations, marketing, demanding clients and a diverse team of spa professionals. We don’t teach massage therapy; nor will we teach students to be an aesthetician or a skin care therapist. We challenge each management student to be a world class leader, via current management teaching models, theories and processes that are used by MBA graduates and CEO’s all over the globe, but which ISM has customized to meet the unique management needs of the spa industry worldwide. We only teach Spa Management and our expertise becomes our students.”

At the Institute of Spa Management, the organization’s primary goal is to further the spa industry through quality management education and professional training for adults. Information about programs, courses and scholarships is available by visiting http://www.spacollege.org

About Institute of Spa Management

Institute of Spa Management (ISM) offers high quality distance education programs and courses at reasonable prices in a dynamic format that enables learning and knowledge retention. ISM believes that the future of the spa industry belongs to those who treat clients with the highest level of integrity and provide cutting edge services in well run facilities.

Snow and Ice - An Insurance Nightmare Waiting to Happen in Your Spa’s Parking Lot

When you own a business where customers are continuously coming and going, you need to always be aware of the many dangers that can present themselves to your customers throughout the year. Not only do you need to keep your customers safe, but you also need to protect yourself from unnecessary lawsuits. The National Safety Council estimates that slips and falls cause over 300,000 injuries and 1,500 deaths every year.

Winter weather can pose some of the most dangerous situations for your spa, particularly due to snow and ice accumulation in the parking lot, on pathways, or steps. In order to make your spa as safe as possible, there are several things you can do to protect your customers and your staff from falls.

If possible, when ice is present, have the parking lot salted regularly to melt slippery ice. Consider installing handrails and non-slip surfaces for steps and ramps. You might also want to install additional external lighting, especially if your spa is open after sundown.

Inside the spa’s entrance, you should have water absorbing mats on the floor to keep snow or ice from pooling on the floor and creating additional hazards inside your spa.

ISM Announces Open Enrollment for January 2008 Spa Management Program

Due to the severe shortage of quality, trained managers in the spa industry, the Institute of Spa Management (ISM) opened its doors to provide this well-needed training to individuals around the world. With its self-paced, online educational program, people looking for spa management training flocked to the school’s website (www.spacollege.org).

Since August of 2007, more than 2000 people have requested information about the program and the October and November classes were filled to capacity. As of this date, there are two spaces available for classes beginning in December and 18 available for the January 2008 classes.

The great thing about ISM is that even though there is a high demand for these seats, the school continues to focus on individual student learning by only accepting 20 students each month into the program. This allows the school to provide one-on-one assistance to students while providing them with the type of high quality services they will be expected to provide once they’re working in a spa environment.

Even though it is an online program, this personalized approach makes it feel as if you’re attending a bricks-and-mortar school while also allowing you to work at your own pace on your own time.

ISM Flooded with Applications for Spa Management Program: The Need is Real

The Institute of Spa Management (ISM) is as hot as the spa industry is right now! This is evident with the flood of applications that ISM has received since they opened their doors less than three months ago. The spa industry is severely lacking quality trained spa managers, but fortunately ISM is now providing this well needed training to highly motivated and career oriented individuals who want to make the spa industry better than it has ever been before.

More than 200 applications have been received for the 12 full tuition and 25 partial tuition scholarships being offered by ISM to qualified spa management candidates each year. The competition is tough, but even if you don’t get one of those scholarships that doesn’t mean you can’t study at ISM. With their easy payment plans and study at your own pace scheduling, ISM is the perfect fit for any budget or busy schedule.

Soon, these students will be entering the spa workforce as qualified and trained spa management experts, so if you’re looking to get into this ever-expanding field, now is the time to start! So, what are you waiting for?

Unique Ways to Keep in Touch with your Spa Clients Between Visits

One of the most difficult things you have to deal with as a spa manager is keeping the lines of communication open between your spa and your clients between visits. Attracting and maintaining returning customers should be your ultimate goal if you want to remain successful. However, this can be a challenge and coming up with new and exciting ways to get your clients back into the spa can be difficult.

One simple thing you can do is to send out birthday, anniversary, holiday, or thank you cards to your clients throughout the year. Along with a handwritten note from the spa manager or owner, include a coupon for free products or discounts on their next visit. Customers like to feel appreciated, so personally reaching out to them on special days will get you noticed and will keep you in their minds.

You can also have special customer appreciation days several times throughout the year and invite special clients in for complimentary massages, prizes, food, and drinks. Rather than just mailing out advertisements that get tossed in the trash immediately, give your clients incentives to open your mail by offering special discounts that make your clients feel valued.

Compensation for Spa Staff: A Look at Different Options for Therapists and Aestheticians

Deciding how to pay your spa employees in order to best benefit the spa while also keeping your staff satisfied can be a difficult balancing act. While you want to make the spa as much money as possible, you also need to remember that your employees are there to make money too and if you are not fulfilling their needs then you will create a negative atmosphere and a continuously revolving door.

There are different ways to pay your staff, including hourly, salary, commission, performance-based, or even team-based profit sharing. All these methods have positives and negatives, so choose what works best for your spa.

In order to keep your employees vested in your spa’s ultimate goals you might want to invest into theirs. Offering health insurance, paid vacations, and a retirement plan can go a long way. You might want to offer other benefits, such as education assistance, credit union affiliation, or daycare assistance.

You can also offer bonuses such as free spa treatments, appreciation parties, performance awards, or weekly training sessions to improve their skills and knowledge. All of these efforts will benefit both the spa and the employees by creating a positive, motivating, and empowering work environment.

Let Go of the Past: The Spa Industry Changes So Fast - Managers Must Keep Up or Get out of the Way

The spa industry is a fast-paced, exciting, and ever-changing business. Spas are rapidly moving from being considered the occasional luxury to a necessary part of everyday life for a wider range of clients. No longer are spas reserved just for the elite. Today the spa client includes the working class, the stay-at-home mom, the blue-collar dad, and the stressed-out teen, so you need to come up with new ways to accommodate this new and diverse clientele.

However, many spa managers don’t understand that with this new acceptance of the spa lifestyle they need to keep up with the latest trends and treatments in order to meet the demands of evolving attitudes. Spa managers should let go of past assumptions about clients and services and keep up with the hot products and services or else they will be left alone in the dust.

It’s more important than ever to keep up on the latest spa trends and truly understand what the client wants and expects from their spa because if they don’t they will find that their competition will be more than happy to accommodate their potential and current clients’ needs.

Why Spa Management Training from ISM Can Quickly Advance your Spa Industry Career

Becoming a successful and effective spa manager is something that takes experience, skill, and training. While experience and skill will develop and grow over time, the level of training that is needed to advance your spa management career can often be difficult to find. Fortunately, ISM makes it easy to obtain the necessary training needed to become a successful spa manager in a fast and convenient program run by experienced and qualified trainers.

Whether you’re new to the spa industry or have been working in the field for years, ISM can quickly give your spa management career that added extra boost it needs to flourish. A spa manager is required to have a unique set of skills and knowledge to be successful and ISM can teach you those skills in the comfort of your own home and at your own individual pace.

With ISM you will learn how to hire and maintain employees, set spa goals, work successfully with clients, plan for short and long term profitability, create high level marketing campaigns, and apply specialized business management skills to your spa business in order to attract, maintain, and keep clients while also making the most profit.

Retail Sales Management in Your Spa: Gift Certificates are Hot - Is Your Spa Cashing In?

Gift certificate sales can provide a continuous flow of steady income to any spa throughout the year, but can also significantly boost profits during the holidays. These sales can account for nearly 25% of your spa’s total sales, increase new client traffic, and lead to regular return business.

In order to make the most of your gift certificate sales, sell them for a specific individual service or for a specific dollar amount that can be redeemed over multiple visits. Once the gift certificate is redeemed for services, have any credits applied towards product sales.

If you choose to sell gift certificates that can be applied to specific spa packages, try creating smaller packages for shorter times to make scheduling easier. Rather than discounting these special packages, you actually want to charge a little more for them because people are more likely to spend more money when purchasing gift certificates.

Also, make your gift certificate sales as easy and convenient for your customers and staff as possible. This might include making them available online, selling them through a third party service, programming them into your POS register, or training your staff in the process ahead of time before the holiday rush.

Retail Sales Management in Your Spa: Moving Product 'Duds'

Oftentimes, some of the best spa products don’t sell for reasons other than quality or effectiveness. Sometimes these spa product duds are the victims of staff familiarity and shelf isolation!

Many products don’t sell simply because your staff is unfamiliar with them. They may become attached to certain products and push them solely based on familiarity. Instead, make sure your staff is familiar with all of your products by creating tester bottles and conducting weekly training sessions to educate them about new products.

Shelf isolation is a common problem with most products because they tend to get lost in the displays. So, you need to regularly rotate products and create high-visibility displays out of product duds and place them in easily accessible locations. Rather than marking products down, create excitement about these slow moving products by placing them out in the open and making signs that say “new product” or “featured item” to get clients interested.

Creating a sales competition for product duds is another great way to stimulate sales and get your staff excited. Have a contest each week and award prizes for whoever sells the most of the featured weekly products, in addition to their regular sales goals.

Have a Favorite Day or Stay Spa?

We Want to Hear About It! You May Win a Spa Gift Certificate

Every day spa or stay spa has its own unique offerings that make it special. By developing the latest pampering techniques, a spa can set itself apart from other spas and give clients something to come back for over and over again.

Do you have a spa that provides outstanding services that make you want to keep coming back for more? If you have a favorite day spa or stay spa, we want to hear all about it. Tell us why the spa you go to is healing, soothing and enjoyable and you may win a spa gift certificate to apply to your next day of treatments.

Our Spa Story "What's Your Favorite Spa Spot" contest is running from November 1 to March 31. Each entry you write about a favorite spa you have visited will garner an additional contest entry. At the end of the contest period, the best post entry will win a $100 gift certificate, compliments of Spa Story, which can be redeemed at prestigious spas worldwide.

With that type of inspiration, why not write all about your favorite spas and what makes them so wonderful for all of our readers? It gives you an opportunity to share valuable spa information with other enthusiasts, read their opinions about spas and get a chance to win a $100 SpaFinder gift certificate.

Give us all the details about the best qualities of the spas you visit today and you could be the big winner of an exciting $100 SpaFinder gift certificate (compliments of Spa Story)!

ENTER YOUR STORY HERE

What Does Your Spa Reception Area Say to Clients & Visitors? First Impressions are Important

The next time you walk through the front doors of your spa, take a good look at what your reception area is saying to your clients. Is it saying “come in, relax, we’re here to serve” or “go away, time for stress, we don’t want you here”? Whether you realize it or not, your reception area can say all of this and more, so make sure yours is projecting a positive attitude, not a negative one.

Create a welcoming environment by making your reception area light and open. Stay away from harsh colors that are too dark or too bright. You want to create an atmosphere of serenity, so don’t distract with unusual artwork, ugly furniture, or unnecessary clutter. You might want to consult with an interior decorator or room planner to help you develop the right atmosphere.

Your front desk should be low enough for the receptionist to see everyone in the reception area, but not so low that all of the computer wires and desk clutter can be seen. Studies have shown that higher desks or ones with closing windows make clients feel unwelcome. So, make sure your clients know they are welcome by creating an inviting atmosphere.

Keeping up with Competitors Calls for an Educated, Informed and Intuitive Management Team

Knowing what your competition is up to is one of the best tools you have in keeping informed of what services and specials your competitors are offering. This is why it is so important for your management team to keep updated and continuous records of what the other spas in your area are doing by simply making regular calls to your competition.

If you are not making these calls then you are going to fall behind when it comes to offering the newest services and latest products at competitive prices because you won’t know what your competitors are offering. More than likely, your competitors are calling you to find out the very same things, so fight fire with fire by making sure you know what they are up to as well.

Another great way to find out exactly what your competitors are doing is to visit them for yourself or send one of your employees or a friend for an “undercover” site visit. Have them take a tour or even provide the money to get a treatment or two done. This is money well spent that will give you greater insight and information into what your competition is up to.