Professional Evaluation of Facial Add-on Service in a Luxury Spa Environment

By: Selena Belisle, Founder/Instructor, CE Institute LLC. The images included in this article are stock photos and not from the spa itself because they prohibited photos to protect client privacy.

The following information is a professional evaluation conducted of an add-on facial service provided in London's hotel spa luxury market.  It is our hope in sharing this one-time experience that both practitioners and business owners can learn how to maximize operations with add-on services, such as this mini facial appointment example: 

From a business perspective, providing add-on services should not just be about scheduling extra services for extra income. That would be an extremely narrow view of such a wonderful business opportunity.  Add-on services also diversify a practitioner’s work, sometimes exposing practitioners to new clients. Other times you might expose clients to new products that are used during the add-on.  Clients may be exposed to a mini-service with the add-on, and then upgrade or rebook for the full service as well.  So, there is a LOT  potential to be had with an add-on service, but it’s up to each individual spa or massage establishment business to offer or maximize it.

Most establishments enjoy an approximate 100% mark-up on spa products.  They might pay $20 for a product and then retail it to customers for $40.  Retailing products is a wonderful method to increase income without much effort.  Providing add-on facial services to massage and bodywork appointments is a wonderful way to increase income both through added service, potential service upgrades and rebooks, and with retail potential income as well.   Of courses massage therapists and bodyworks should not provide esthetic or facial services without proper training and licensure.

What we have found is there are some who provide add-ons like the service I had at this establishment, the YĀTRĀ Urban Spa at Montcalm Royal London House. But the potential of this extra business is minimized when extended services or retail are not offered with it.  Service providers should be compensated approximately 10% of the sale price on average with retail sales, so it is in their financial interest as well to provide retail sales suggestions with their services.  Plus, massage therapists, estheticians and other personnel are usually paid a commission of each service, so it’s in the practitioner's best interest to suggest to upgrade to longer and greater services when they have the time to do so, to continue to maximize their income while at work.

Regardless of all of this added business potential, this was my personal experience at this London spa with my Radiance Lift add-on. 

The Radiance Lift add-on was advertised as a "kombucha-infushed sheet mask" and showed a picture of a face and facial sheet next to the service description. Applying these facial sheets only takes a minute or two at most to apply. I was curious what the spa would do for the remaining 14-minutes of this appointment so I booked it! The service provider will usually just pull a sheet from an enclosed source and place it over the client’s face, to their comfort level.  Almost anyone can place a facial sheet over their own face, but regardless of applies it, allergies or other contraindications such as skin burn, rash, etc. must be considered first.  This is why the practitioner must be properly trained to provide this service.

To my pleasant surprise, no facial sheet was offered, but a mini facial was provided instead.  I didn’t ask why they didn’t provide the facial sheet as advertised and prepaid for.  The entire spa service provided was not a great experience, and I did not want to add to the negativity by asking or pointing out that what they were providing was different than what I had scheduled.  In reality, I was thrilled to receive the mini facial instead of the facial sheet application that I had already paid for. 

If the massage therapist who provided the mini facial performed a skin analysis, she did so silently, without questions, so her analysis was incomplete at best. The reason why you want to ask questions if I do have some red tones in my skin, and if I had exfoliated that morning, then a service provider would not want to provide a double cleanse or exfoliation within a few hours a later.  That could result in a medical error with skin burn or other soft tissue damage. Her mini facial was provided in the following order:

She started with a facial cleanse which was wonderful and then ended with wiping the cleanser away with a cold towel while standing on the side of the table which was awful.  The spa establishment was unaware and not prepared for the facial add-on which I had scheduled and prepaid the day before this appointment, so I’m not sure if their hot towel cabi or hot water was broken; however, cleanser should be removed with a  warm to hot towel to open the skin’s pore for a greater cleansing effect when wiping the skin.

She repeated a second cleanse followed by another awful wipe with a cold towel.

This was followed by a wonderful facial massage, when she later told me was a facial oil when I had asked her what it was after the service had concluded. A third cold towel wipe of this facial oil was used with poorest skill level of all.  After wiping my entire face, the towel was not adjusted so the dirty area of the towel that had just wiped my face was now applied to wipe over my eyes. As a trained and licensed esthetics instructor myself, this disgusted me and made my eye area feel dirtier than when the facial service started.

In professional spa services, a new towel should be used after every step as well.  In this service, I’m not sure if she used a new towel with every wipe, but it did not feel like it.

Toner was applied next with what felt like some form of cotton, in a manner that could have been improved.  At least I think it was toner.  I would have to guess because she did not tell me what she was using nor doing, and I did not ask her so that I could evaluate her service as she provides it, instead of possibly making her nervous with questions or giving suggestions on how to improve the service through questions, etc.  The contact between the cotton and skin was firmer than necessary, and the order to which the cotton was applied to the skin was erratic.  She moved between my cheeks to the forehead to the chin and other areas in a nonsensical order that I have never felt before and simply felt like a misapplication. A more standard application of cotton to the face would be working upwards, downwards or laterally, with working upwards the regularly preferred method with facial services.

I believe the therapist finished with dabbing moisturizer on my face.  The beautiful massage strokes she used with the cleanses and facial oil were gone, and a rougher quick spread of product across my face was applied instead which was an extremely unpleasant finish after the cold towels and inappropriate use of cotton.

This practitioner provides incredible massage strokes and has beautiful hands. She would likely benefit from another practitioner emulating what it feels like to have a cold towel, too much pressure with cotton and a rough moisturizer application on her own face, so that she could learn from this and know from feeling it that those steps can be seriously improved.  However, in the end, human services are usually a personal preference, and what I enjoy, another may dislike and vice versa.  However, after decades of education, personal practice, employment, employing others and teaching these types of services, I believe I have a reasonable opinion of what the general population likes or expects with this type of service, and these are my opinions.

I do not know if this spa establishment offers retail skin care products.  I did not see any publicly available in a very small and sparce reception area of one of the nicer hotels in London.  If the spa does not provide retail, then they are missing added potential business income in addition to not providing the best service of all to a client.  With facial services in particular, we would want a client to be able to continue with appropriate facial cleansers, exfoliators, moisturizers and other specialized requirements for ongoing skin improvement and glow. If a client purchases a retail product that is only available at your establishment, and if they like the product because its providing results, then the client may have to return to your establishment for more product when they run out, which could result in additional scheduled services upon their return with other greater business opportunities.

We do not recommend substituting services without a client’s knowledge or consent, like what happened with this service at this establishment.  Every business, as some point, will usually run out of supplies.  Sometimes manufacturers discontinue products and there also can be supply shortages, shipping issues and other problems.  The reason why it’s important to gain the clients’ consent prior to altering their service regardless of the reason is a provider may complete an altered service, and then the client has the right to request the service they paid for, which means you could provide an alternative service without payment if consent was not acquired beforehand.  It is our opinion that clients do not have to pay for services that were provided but not scheduled.  We believe substituting services without a client’s consent, whether it’s prepaid or charged after the fact, could be seen as a fraud upon the client, which is usually illegal, or criminal is US based practices.  So, I believe the massage therapist ran the risk of providing this mini facial service for free, if I had requested the paid Radiance life appointment I had scheduled afterwards.

I do not enjoy writing critical reviews that point out poor skill level and execution; however, it is written for our students and other practitioners to learn from, because we often do not see constructive criticisms like this in writing.  We wrote this analysis here solely for our school’s teaching purposes where our students can hopefully learn from this experience and use it to improve their own services.