Gathered in the sunshine at the De Vere Cotswold Water Park Hotel in Gloucestershire, more than 400 senior spa professionals and wellness leaders reconnected at this year’s Spa Life UK, which offered up a mix of one-to-one meetings, education and networking as well as the Good Spa Guide Awards dinner.

Revealing the optimistic findings of its Covid-19 Spa report 2022 at Spa Life, Good Spa Guide director Caitlin Dalton said that overall, more than 8,000 respondents had signaled their trust in spas to make the right decisions around Covid-19.

Three quarters of those polled said they no longer expect social distancing measures to be in place, while 88% of people said they would visit spas more often now the coronavirus restrictions have been lifted and only 16% expect therapists to be wearing PPE.

‘Live your life well, it is short’

Keynote Spa Life speaker Amanda Foo-Ryland, an expert in neural coding, shared a deeply heartfelt session on how to live and learn from life’s curveballs. “Live your life well, it is short and this is it,” she said.

“We have 64,000 thoughts a day – 72% of those thoughts are negative,” she added. “I was diagnosed with kidney cancer; a year and a day later my husband died of stomach cancer. The temptation was to curl up, focus on those negative thoughts and ask why me? If, instead, you have an attitude of ‘this has been sent to teach me’, you’re guaranteed a different end result.”

Foo-Ryland’s Just be Me NLP course, entitled Learning How to Navigate Curveballs, is available for free at www.yourlifeliveit.com

New launches

Industry news from the expo came from Sothys, which used Spa Life as the platform to officially relaunch into the UK spa market, and Mii Cosmetics, which showcased two new launches for the summer – Skin Secret Cream Tint and the new Cheek Veil blush.

Ellisons showcased its latest launch, Mani in a Box and Pedi in a Box, both ideal for boosting in-room and till-point sales. Meanwhile, Elemental Herbology announced it would be launching a new Fire Purity Oil later this month and Wellsystem demonstrated its Wave_Touch massage and relaxation unit.

Other brands showcasing at the event included Germaine de Capuccini, Temple Spa, BC Softwear, Gaia Skincare, Sapphire Spa Solutions, Sparenity, Well CBD, OTO and Subtle Energies.

Event director and co-founder, Andrew Hammond said: “There is relief and very much renewed optimism in the room. Relief to be back in person and tangible excitement that the industry is recovering.

“It’s been amazing to see lots of new, different brands – 30% of our sponsors and 37% of our buyers were new to Spa Life this year,” he added. “There is a refreshing sense of community and some real drive to move on from the last two years.”

Recruitment and retention

The event was drawn to a close with a lively panel discussion on the recruitment crisis in spas, led by UKSA chair Adam Chatterley.

Sarah Johnson, head of spa at Rudding Park, argued “it’s not about recruitment at all, but about retention. It’s all down to creating an environment people don’t want to leave. Know their stories. Therapists can be vulnerable – it’s a lonely anxious job at times. We expect them to turn it on and perform outstanding treatments whatever they may have going on at home. Are you surveying your therapists regularly, then actioning their requests and shouting about what you’ve done?”

Lesley Bacon, group health club and spa manager at Hand Picked Hotels, added her belief that at its core the issue is a marketing problem. “What are we doing to make people aspire to be therapists? We talk a lot internally as a sector, we all know how great we are, but we need to scale up – it’s time we shouted about working in our industry to others.”