This year, the 21^st edition of the ISPA conference, with the theme of “Believe,” was more lightly attended than in some of the boom years, but featured a full roster of exhibitors and excellent keynotes and breakout presentations. Most  vendors were quite happy with the contacts that they made.  The conference schedule was compressed into three days this year, making it a little easier logistically, as well.

Our first inspirational keynote was from Bert Jacobs, founding brother of the Life is Good company, and this year’s winner of the Alex Szekely Humanitarian Award.  Bert and his brother Danny grew the company from their first sale of 48 tee shirts in 45 minutes to $100m in annual sales over a fifteen-year period.  Life is Good has never advertised, choosing instead to invest their energies into events that benefit children.  Jacobs said, “I’m not going to talk about cotton, we want to connect with what people care about.  Our clothing is a vehicle for the message that optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”  His advice in brand-building was, “Know who you are, and act like it.”  Simple but powerful words.

GramercyOne’s own Dan Chandre gave an excellent breakout presentation on the “new KPI’s.”  Chandre correctly pointed out that most of the KPI’s we use to benchmark performance in the spa industry measure what we’re already doing, and are not a measure of potential performance or customer acquisition success.  One new statistic to consider is O2O, or online to offline performance, which is a hugely growing revenue trend (estimated to reach $14bn by 2015) that reflects the way clients shop today.  Also, mobile capabilities are redefining online commerce; of mobile shoppers, 60% browse for gifts, 50% check store hours, and 26% made purchases.  Having a mobile friendly website plays a key role in luring in new clients in the future.  One of his most interesting suggested metrics was what he called Final Appointment Factor, or the ability to identify the value of the final ticket at checkout vs. at time of booking, allowing a spa to calculate the percentage of successful up-sell.

Other notable breakouts that I attended included travel industry consultant Berkeley Young of Young Strategies presenting “How Spas Appeal to Different Generation Groups.” I’ll detail his good advice in a future blog. Dr. Bryan Williams, a popular previous presenter, shared “Leading a Five-Star Service Team,” in which he advised that staff should receive recognition for a job well-done at least once per week. Mel Kleiman whose presented “Building a Frontline that Builds your Bottom Line,” which focused on recruiting, selecting, training and motivating staff.  Four Seasons Regional Spa Director Todd Hewitt gave a terrific presentation, “Simple and Cost-effective Tips to Enhance Customer Service” which I’ll also detail in a future blog.  Rianna Riego and Nancy Griffin covered “The Art of Networking,” which included both physical and digital methods, Michael Stelzner addressed digital social media, and Christi Cano and Monte Zwang discussed potential changes to make your business more profitable.  In total, 20 Professional Development Sessions were attended by hundreds of conference-goers.

We received a brief preview of the forthcoming research Spa Consumer Snapshot Initiative report from Colin McIlheney of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He told us that in a survey with 1000 respondents, 39.2% have visited a spa in the last 12 months.  Conversely, 70% haven’t!  Also, 85.9% believed spas have a positive impact on health and well-being.

Noted futurist and keynoter Faith Popcorn previewed her forthcoming book The Ark and gave us some good soundbites:

• Reaching your best future means you’ll probably have to change something

• Create change, don’t fear it

• We don’t trust anyone, but still crave leadership

• The future holds even more purchasing and decision-making power for females.

• Combating Groupon?  Be something more than a price.

 

The annual Silent & Live Auctions of exciting spa vacations, products and equipment raised over $80k for the ISPA Foundation, which uses the money to fund educational initiatives.

Our final keynote was from Tony Hsieh of Zappos fame; although he didn’t start the company, he did bring it to its current powerhouse performance of over $1bn annually, and helped foster the company’s unusual corporate culture.  Hsieh began showing a picture of an ICEE, which identifies Zappos’ core values: Inspire, Connect, Educate, Experience. Repeat customers and word of mouth drive Zappos’ growth, and Hsieh says they use the telephone as their branding device.  He backs it up by putting their 800-number on every page of the website; they actually WANT to talk to customers, and their call-center employees have no scripts to follow or metrics to meet, other than to make customers happy.  The longest recorded customer service call clocked in at an impressive 8 hours and 23 minutes!  Hsieh cited the movie “Notorious” for the quote, saying, “Don’t chase the paper, chase the dream,” and stated that better companies with higher vision don’t focus everything on profits.  After the keynote, attendees lined up to purchase copies of Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness and hoped that some of his success would rub off!