Pulse May 2018 | Page 31

“It's important to instill a sense of exclusivity in your retail area.” n n n — CAROLINE PERDOMO Director of Spa and Retail The Spa at Woodside Westwood, Kansas Miraj Hammam Spa by Caudalie Paris exclusively uses Caudalie products, which can be found online, but Dunham has learned to pare down the selection at her retail boutique. “We have a relatively small area for merchandise compared to other hotel spas,” she notes. “This does, however, allow us to be selective on our retail products to ensure we are offering items that are in line with our brand and what our guests are looking for.” More and more, retail sales are becoming about the experience. Exclusivity is one way of promoting an experience, but you can also try visual merchandising to create a mood, events to generate buzz, or gifts to make guests come back for more. “It can be challenging to keep repeat guests engaged in our retail boutique, but we try to really capitalize on visual merchan- dising to keep things new,” says Dunham. “By adding new items quarterly and changing the placement of existing items, we can use a few small changes to keep our smaller retail area looking fresh.” Grand Spa works with their resource partners to offer a gift with purchase and product bundles for a special discount to entice customers to buy retail after their services. McWhorter adds, “We also sometimes have special days where we have an unannounced extra discount with services to surprise customers and make them feel special.” Dunham agrees by saying, “We also work very closely with our skin care brand. They are always able to offer great gift with purchase items, samples and literature to our guests, so guests can try before investing in full-sized products. We prominently display these retail promotions throughout the spa as well as on our website and monthly newsletters.” The promotion of these gifts, deals and events is almost as important as the sale itself. According to ISPA’s August 2017 Snapshot Survey on marketing, 96 percent of spa respondents use social media to advertise and market their spa. And why not? Social media is either free or very low cost, and it is where your customers spend a ton of their time. The key to social media promotion is supplementing it with other forms of marketing. “The Miraj Hammam Spa by Caudalie Paris allocates a monthly budget to specific campaigns that are promoted on social media,” explains Dunham. “They create a curated social media calendar and have a PR team that engages on social media and monitors the platforms