Tag Archives: 60 Minutes

Received this email from Debra Locker at ISPA helping clarify the question I had about “male visits on average”

Hello Susie – we hope you are enjoying a lovely holiday season!

Thanks for your comprehensive coverage of ISPA’s 2007 Spa Industry Study on your blog. We wanted to clarify one of the questions you raised from your posting on Nov. 23 regarding the number of male patrons and visits.

“Male visits on average” is not the same as the number of male spa-goers. ISPA measures both visits and number of male vs. female spa-goers as two different ways to look at genders and their behaviors.

-The ISPA 2007 Spa Industry Study asks industry professionals the percentage of visits received in their spa by male guests. The percentage of male visits reported in the ISPA 2007 Spa Industry Study do not equal people, though equals the number of visits male guests make to a spa.

-The ISPA 2006 Spa-goer Study, which is a survey of consumers, reported that 31% of U.S. spa-goers and 29% of Canadian spa-goers were male. These figures represent the actual number of people and not visits.

For a practical example, your husband Pete may visit a spa 10 times in a year and my husband Ron may visit twice. They’d have a combined 12 visits, but we would only count them as two males. Their combined visits (12) would be measured as a percentage in the ISPA 2007 Spa Industry Study and the actual number of men (2) would be counted in the ISPA 2006 Spa-goer Study.

I hope that helps clarify your question about the percentage of male spa-goers and their visits. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with additional questions.

Once again, thank you for your coverage of the 2007 Industry Study, as well as the recent ISPA Conference & Expo, on your blog. Best, Debra

Debra Locker Public Relations Director International SPA Association 2365 Harrodsburg Road, Suite A325 Lexington, KY 40504 P 1.859.226.4374 F 1.859.226.4445 debra.locker@ispastaff.com and http://www.experienceispa.com/
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Thankful for Spas, Thankful for being in the Spa Industry, and most Thankful for our Friends in the Spa World

Thankful for Spas, Thankful for being in the Spa Industry, and most Thankful for our Friends in the Spa World
by Susie Ellis

It’s Thanksgiving Eve and I did still want to post to my blog concerning the recent ISPA conference as promised in my last post. As it turns out, that works out just fine. Since I have been to almost every ISPA conference since they began having them in the early 90’s, I can truly say I am thankful for the “family reunion” I enjoy each year at the conference. My own family is quite small – just my twin sister and a brother here in the U.S. – so catching up with this ever-expanding family of fellow spa colleagues is always a pleasure.

With time short for me this year, I was only able to wave to some – Deborah Evans and Jim Root – or enjoy a short chat – Kim Marshall, Lynn McNees, and Andrew Gibson. With some I was able to sit and enjoy dinner – Gordon Taretta, Lisa Hedley, and Jeremy McCarthy. Of course, there are always fun times with our SpaFinder team who joined Peter and I in record number this year, and certainly there are precious moments with a few of my mentors like Deborah Szekely, Sheila Cluff, Juanita and Pat Corbett, Ruth Stricker, Bernie Burt, etc. There are also newer colleagues to reconnect with like Nick of Yelo (the napping spa) and Robert deStephano (Sleep Garden), and Clare West who runs Six Senses Europe.

My favorite moments during these past five ISPA conferences have probably been at the Alex Szekely Humanitarian Award dinners, which we host each year along with Mary-Elizabeth Gifford (love giving parties with her…she has such great taste in flowers and everything to do with entertainment) and Roma Maxwell, the PR director for Rancho La Puerta who represented Deborah Szekely and Peter Jensen in our dinner planning process (and this year put together a beautiful tribute card to all of the past recipients of the award named in Alex’s honor.)

In addition to acknowledging this year’s recipient, Maya Angelou who would be with us on the last day of the conference, we were able to toast Jonathan deVierville for receiving the dedicated contributor award from ISPA (he is amazing and this year even more so, as he is now amazing with fewer words) and Clodagh who received the ISPA visionary award (and very rightfully deserved with her wonderful design work which includes our “spa-inspired” offices in Manhattan.)

And then there are always my cherished moments with Deborah Szekely who has been like a second mother to me. (How is it that all these years later she still remembers my first marriage fiasco? Luckily she gave Peter the OK before I married him 22 years ago). Deborah is 85 now yet in many ways the same today as when I met her over 30 years ago. These days I share some of the sentiments she must have felt all along, growing older, seeing new spa industry attendees who seem so young….and knowing what a wonderful career they have in front of them – that they will be adding their unique talents to shape a hopefully strong and healthy future.

There are of course dozens of others who I had a chance to reconnect with…hearing about new babies, new marriages, new jobs, and new jobs again, etc. And, of course, we all tell each other that we haven’t aged a bit. (OK, yeah)

And so….this Thanksgiving when we go around the table and say what we are thankful for (Peter is not thrilled about this yearly routine but amuses me by playing along), it is really easy for me to recognize that I am indeed very thankful for my spa family.

I know that Peter feels the same. For most of his life he was in the automotive industry. He just joined me in the spa world around the year 2001. Occasionally we drive by large car dealerships and I ask him if he misses the car business. His answer has been the same for the past 7 years. “Not at all….I love the people in the spa industry so much better.”

Put me down for being thankful for that too.

Mayflower Inn and Spa on Good Morning America

garden1 lg 792688 Mayflower Inn and Spa on Good Morning AmericaJust received this email from Adriana Mnuchin, who is the proprietor of the new Mayflower Inn and Spa in Washington, Connecticut (see this entry from a few weeks ago). Looks like we weren’t the only ones who felt that the Mayflower will set a new standard. I am hoping that Good Morning America will stress the “all-you-can-spa” philosophy, which gives the destination spa participants unlimited spa treatments. It’s such a point of differentiation. And then of course there’s the art, the staff, the decor, the cuisine, the details, the beauty….Oh my, I hope GMA gives this enough time! Tune in.

Susie,
We have some exciting news to share. Good Morning America will air a piece about Mayflower Spa on Thursday, July 20. They were told by Travel + Leisure that we were number 1 in country, and we are thrilled. They tell us it will be near the 8am segment . Best, Adriana


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