Knowledge is power
Robert Teulings and Pauline Verhoef, director and commercial director of Dutch wellness resort Thermae 2OOO, outline the reasons behind and the objectives of a new industry initiative, the International Spa & Wellness Knowledge Center.
Wellness is a young industry and one that is still not used to and therefore proving unwilling to share knowledge and information and to learn from what others in the business are doing. However, as the industry matures, it needs to take a different approach to exchanging data and best practice. It needs to develop an open mind and an attitude that allows us to share information with one another and to reap the rewards of doing so.
In times of crisis, companies are forced to become creative and that includes Thermae 2000. The financial crisis, which lead to fewer guests and a lower average spend per guest, made it necessary for us to discover the keys to being successful in this new era.
At Thermae 2000, we found that one of those keys is dedicating time and resources to training your staff in a new and different way. We invested in purchasing a great software package, (xPlan), a necessary basis for any business, but we also focused on training our staff to think outside the box, to reach a higher level of success.
What we found worked for us was giving our staff ‘American style’ positive attitude training in order to increase spend per guest. Rather than keep the benefits of this strategy to ourselves, we believe that sharing it makes the message, and the industry as a whole, stronger.
So we opened the doors to our office at Thermae 2000, figuratively speaking, and made this business intelligence available to others. That openly exchanging knowledge is to everyone’s advantage is something that the hotel industry, for example, realised a long time ago and we should learn from that.
Read the full feature on page 28 of the June issue of the Professional Spa and Wellness digital magazine for FREE here, or access the digital magazine by selecting your chosen platform here.
