features
Revenue management
Spas have been getting even more savvy about yield management since the pandemic began. Spa Business asks how software suppliers are supporting them
Most software incorporates variable pricing (time of day and day of week), but ResortSuite also supports dynamic pricing and dynamic availability.
Dynamic availability is our key differentiator, as it’s a more effective and powerful revenue management tool.
Menu and prices don’t change, but the mix of when services are available changes, ensuring higher profitability during peak times and better use of non-peak times.
ResortSuite revenue management takes many decisions out of the hands of staff and we find spas that focus on dynamic availability, typically achieve a 20-30 per cent increase in profit during their high demand days/times.
As a side effect, more lower-margin services are pushed into non-peak dates/times, filling time slots that would typically go unsold. This creates an additional 10-15 per cent increase in profit during off-peak times.
Revenue management is also used to ensure that the mix of treatments on offer positively impacts retail sales. For example, by booking a high-value facial versus a wax service during peak times, the spa not only makes more profit on the facial, but also generates on average 45 per cent of the treatment price in additional product revenue relative to other types of services.
Operators using our revenue management capabilities see a 30 per cent uptick on the average ticket size and an increase of 23 per cent in new customer acquisition.
That’s because the system’s dashboards present sales, projections, and trends at all business levels, meaning owners have access to data and a bird’s eye view of where they’re at, where the business is taking off and what can be done to fully leverage and optimise this success.
Zenoti offers several tools to help businesses drive revenue growth, including automated marketing programs that target customers based on their behaviour patterns, upsell add-on services for a visit and remind customers about their next visit.
EzPulse and ezAds are two unique functions the platform supports – with the EzPulse mobile app, business owners and employees gain revenue visibility and insight by tracking key metrics against goals and collaborating across teams with messaging capabilities built into the app. They can compare current performance to past performance, congratulate employees who are doing a great job and support those who are struggling.
ezAds automatically manages digital ad placement across sites such as Google, Facebook and Instagram, helping the business acquire new customers. Spas only have to set a budget and ezAds takes care of the rest from allocating that budget across channels to figuring out keywords.
Spas can manage revenue using a number of Book4Time tools. This includes day-of-week and time-of-day dynamic pricing, as well as service and guest analysis and restriction capabilities to pinpoint busy and slow periods and maximise high-yielding treatments.
Coupons and Automatic Discounts are core features that other software providers may not offer, to drive business or maximise revenues.
Book4Time offers multiple types of coupons that the operator can issue, including incentive coupons, and ‘gift with purchase’ coupons.
For operators that offer memberships and other incentive programmes, spas can use the Automatic Discounting of Services/Retail function which automates the entire process, ensuring guests get the discounts they’re entitled to, without staff having to verify or manually add them.
The software also has a referrals program to allow spas to issue credits to guests who refer new customers.
Ninety per cent of spas have had capacity reduced by 50 per cent since the start of the pandemic, so have had to increase revenue in other ways, using everything from marketing filters to monitoring team member performance. They’ve also needed to reduce no-shows.
Our SMS booking reminder service has seen spa no-show rates go from 14.1 per cent down to 5.6 per cent. This allows spa operators to forecast more efficiently and bring in more revenue with reduced last-minute gaps in their diary.
Being aware of revenue, yield management and forecasting is paramount to success and iSalon offers over 130 detailed reports.
The system also has multiple pop-up notifications – one of the most popular prompts staff to upsell things such as retail products when presenting guests with the bill, for example. Another encourages them to rebook clients and if charges for the service are above a specific amount, staff can send a Pay by Link to take a deposit.
With DaySmart’s Orchid Spa Software, spas have access to the data they need to manage revenue and make data-driven decisions.
The system’s real-time reports are served up in a customisable, actionable way so spa owners don’t have to go digging to find information: sales statistics are conveniently accessible in graphs that can be filtered by dates to quickly evaluate progress, for example.
Tracking client retention, referrals and sales benchmarks enables businesses to strategise and set goals for revenue growth.
One key function is the connector for QuickBooks, which automatically pushes all tickets to QuickBooks Online, in real-time, for easy accounting. This integration allows spas to report revenue without complex processes.
It’s easy in business to take 10 steps in a direction, only to find out you were going the wrong way. Helmbot provides revenue data that’s easy to understand and access to help spa managers establish where to productively spend their time.
Advanced reporting enables them to quickly answer even the most complicated questions to boost revenue. For example, which activities brought in the most revenue before the pandemic and where is it coming from now? What times of day produce the most revenue, for what types of services? Which regulars haven’t returned recently? Who spent over US$100 in the last year, but has never been a member?
Spas can look into which discounts have affected their average price paid per appointment, they can track the successes (and failures) of marketing campaigns and find out which employees are selling the most products and memberships.
Our spas have seen a major increase in revenue after implementing strategic price changes using Klicbook’s yield management feature.
The software calculates optimal pricing by utilising our service performance report, price history and sales data to forecast demand and consumer buying behaviour, as well as looking at seasonal and other factors affecting sales.
The yield management feature allows spas to set up automatic price updates based on capacity and demand.
The price can be adjusted automatically based on predefined values, regardless of day, month, or year. For example, the price could be lowered if there is more than 60 per cent capacity to drive custom. Klickbook makes it easier to manage spas by enabling businesses to measure room utilisation, client reservation rates, responses to promotions and other factors that indicate success.
When used on its own, Core by Premier has the tools needed to help maximise profitability, manage day-to-day operations and highlight areas of growth. However, our clients also benefit from trusted third party integrations to boost sales.
Core is the only spa management software to partner with RevSpa and Smartbox and one of a limited few to partner with spa booking website Spabreaks.com.
Some Premier clients using Core’s integration with online booking platform, RevSpa, have seen a 68.8 per cent conversion of people who visited their website. In addition, 45 per cent of bookings were secured outside working hours. The use of RevSpa also results in large numbers of bookers opting for add-ons.
Smartbox’s gift experience sites have a traffic share of 65 per cent.
This means Core clients using the integration can not only be more efficient, but also confident they’ll reach more buyers.
These partnerships put wellness operators’ brands in front of a larger audience, while also saving the time that’s usually associated with processing vouchers or taking bookings over the phone.
Everything becomes more automated for a seamless customer journey.
In a quick study, we found that operators leveraging SpaSoft’s yield management tools have increased the number of appointments in non-peak times by 18-23 per cent and increased the overall revenue during peak times by 15-18 per cent by adjusting availability and pricing.
They’re able to do this because we offer a range of features to help spas respond to forecast demand.
Multiple reports help spas analyse guest segmentation, peak times and future demand levels to better determine yield. The yield management features can also be used to define business rules pertaining to service availability to keep resource schedules free for booking premium services during high demand periods.
With SpaSoft Online Booking, spa operators can also execute their yield management activities directly into their website, making it easy to accommodate demand.
By minimising the time required to set up revenue strategies for multi channels, Maestro allows staff to focus on service delivery.
Using the setup options available in Maestro, pricing for services and treatments can be changed by time of day, day of week or by the season.
Guests can also be ‘assigned’ different market segments which can also offer varying prices using the same criteria. The integrated setup ensures the pricing change occurs automatically without any intervention being needed by the spa operator.
Using the Analytics BI tool to distinguish booking trends and patterns enables dynamic revenue maximisation, so the operator can focus on looking after guests while ensuring the rates offered during peak- and off-peak times reflect booking volumes and assist with suggested ‘sell times’ to achieve higher occupancy levels.
Maestro offers selling strategies through an integrated booking engine – these are configured directly in the software for both direct and online bookings, ensuring consistent pricing, regardless of which booking channel is used.
