Resistance to spa benchmarking in the UAE is set to change thanks to a committee of industry leaders dedicated to improving the region’s reputation for wellness, according to Christian Kiefer – general manager for Cedar Bridge’s partners: Dreamworks Spas and Zen Yoga Studios – who wrote an exclusive Thought Leader column for Spa Opportunities.

THOUGHT LEADER: Christian Kiefer, general manager for Cedar Bridge’s partners: Dreamworks Spas and Zen Yoga Studios

Resistance to benchmarking in the UAE

Locally we’re facing resistance to benchmarking and have not seen proper reports that could help us to know where to position ourselves in the UAE. The closer spas are located to each other, managers are less inclined to share their numbers.

Many owners, spa managers and directors are still not open to the idea of offering an insight into their business. What they are forgetting, however, is that by not sharing their data, they will not be able to establish if they are performing better than others.

For example, let’s say you run a 10-treatment room spa with six therapists and exceed your set budget of AED270,000 (US$73,508, €67,235, £49,405) in revenue every month by AED10,000 (US$2,723, €2,490, £1,831) to AED15,000 (US$4,084, €3,725, £2,745), is that good news? Well, it depends on your gross operating profit first and foremost, but it also depends on what your competitors are doing revenue-wise.

If a spa nearby is generating AED325,000 (US$88,482, €80,931, £59,506) every month, but has the same number of treatment rooms and the same number of therapists then obviously the first spa’s figures don’t look as good anymore.

This is why we need transparency and the will to share our individual profit and loss data. Benchmarking is key to success and we can only perform better in the industry if we all begin to communicate our great results.

While no one has previously taken ownership of the mission to change the regional mindset and encourage data sharing, a new committee is being set up by industry leaders to analyse the KPIs of spas in the Middle Eastern region. First discussed at the Professional Spa & Wellness Conference Dubai, the initiative to collect and examine data is expected to launch before Q3 2015.