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The continuing economic downturn has not spared
the luxury hotel spa industry. According to the latest figures of
Spa STAR, a spa benchmarking program published by STR, performance
metrics were either on par or declined for the first six months of
2009.
“The luxury hotel industry is facing a very
tough operating environment,” said Jan D. Freitag, vice president
at STR. “The luxury spas in those hotels have not been immune to
the effects. It stands to reason that operators are now giving
renewed attention to locals business, which seems to have the
desired effect on utilization rates.”
Year-to-date, the revenue per available
treatment room hour declined from US$136.79 in June 2008 to
US$120.88 in June 2009, a 13% decrease. However, at the same time
the utilization of the treatment rooms (calculated as treatment
rooms hours used divided by the treatment room hours available)
year-to-date remained almost unchanged.
Through June 2008, the
treatment room utilization was 30.3%, compared to 30.8% through June 2009. It remains to be seen if discounting of
treatments was the catalyst that kept the utilization rate from
deteriorating.
For luxury hotel spa salons, the
decline in revenues per available station hour was equally as
steep. Year-to-date, an 18% decrease was reported, from
US$61.87 through June 2008 to US$52.43 through June 2009.
Interestingly, utilization rates of salon stations were almost
identical to the figures reported a year ago, the same trend
observed for treatment rooms.
Through June 2008, the utilization
rate was reported to STR as 21.1%; through June 2009, it was
21.5%.
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