A Delicate Balance
Can spas and massage therapists coexist?

By Mary Bemis

This past summer I went to a well-known resort spa with a friend of mine. We booked our massages at the same time. Mine went without a hitch: A decently performed deep-tissue massage was just what I needed after a long flight. My friend, Juliet, however, had an entirely different experience. I found her huddled in a corner of the steam room looking stressed. “How was your massage?” I asked. “Horrible,” she replied. “My therapist yelled at me and told me I was like an overheated car!” It turns out she and her therapist had a falling out of sorts. When it was time for her to flip onto her back, she instinctively reached for the sheet to pull over her, which caused the towel to fall, which upset the therapist. He proceeded to lecture her on proper spa draping and client etiquette. The rest of the massage was tense, to say the least. “He continued with the massage, but didn’t really connect with me,” Juliet said. “At the end of it, he told me to go into the steam room and stay there for 20 minutes because I was like an overheated car and I needed to relax. He waited for me outside, and I walked past him and that was it. The idea was that I was so tense and so uptight, but he didn’t acknowledge how he had contributed to that.”

Unfortunately, this story isn’t so atypical of what is taking place in today’s spas. What this exemplifies, first and foremost, is a lack of proper training on the spa director’s part when it comes to customer service. The therapist was so caught up in protocol he made his client feel extremely uncomfortable. The story did not have a good ending for anyone involved: Juliet was tense and upset, the massage therapist was tense and upset, and the spa director ended up losing money by comping the treatment.

In feel-good fields like spa and massage, why are the lines of communication being constantly crossed? “I think there’s a lot of miscommunication,” says Julia Sutton, chief operating officer of Exhale spas, a New York City-based company with seven spas and plans for at least a dozen more. “A lot of great bodyworkers come to us very frustrated because of the way they’re treated at spas. They are treated like a number. I think we’re getting closer to realizing you can put $10 million into building a spa, but it’s nothing unless you have great bodyworkers,” she says. “You have to take care of them and make sure everything’s handled for them — the temperature of the room, the music system — otherwise they’d be doing their own private practice. Our managers realize they’re there to take care of their technicians.”

To avoid miscommunication, Jeremy McCarthy, spa director at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., teaches a course a few times a year called Exceptional Treatment. “It’s customer service for spa therapists,” he says. “I jokingly subtitle the class, ‘Everything I Wish Massage Therapists Would Learn In School But Usually Don’t.’” McCarthy says massage therapists pick up their guests in the waiting room and have to establish rapport with them very quickly, so they feel comfortable getting in a room and taking their clothes off. “I give examples of what to say and what not to say. For example, a lot of therapists will say to the client at end of the service, ‘I noticed you were really tight and had a lot of tension.’ That’s the last thing you want to hear when you’re done with a massage. A lot of therapists might make inappropriate comments about a tattoo, a scar, or a birthmark without realizing those things might have a psychological connection, leading to more [client]
anxiety.”

So, let’s take a look at this ever-expanding field and how we can begin to mend the fences.

What Does a Spa Director Want?
What exactly does the ideal massage therapist look like to today’s top spa directors? Kate Mearns, sports and spa director at Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg, Va., and chairwoman of the International Spa Association (ISPA), says, “A successful massage therapist, in my opinion, has a genuine passion for what they are doing. They enjoy meeting new people and have chosen their career based on helping others. They have an appetite for continued education and are flexible and able to handle quick operational changes with a positive attitude.”

Barbara Close is a massage therapist, as well as founder and president of Naturopathica Holistic Health based in East Hampton, N.Y. She says she looks for someone with good technical skills and “their heart and soul in the right place with the ability for conscious touch.” Close also looks for therapists who practice a lot of yoga or meditation and who know how to be “present in their bodywork, listening with their hands instead of their brain.”

Meanwhile, Mara Concordia, owner of Peaceful Spirit Therapeutic Massage Centers in Tucson and a licensed massage therapist, wants well-educated therapists. “The more education, the better,” she says. “I also look for people who have some form of precious life experience that can contribute to the client relationship and/or experience in the medical field. For example, I have a massage therapist who was a nurse in Austria, another who was a physical therapist in the Czech Republic.”

A team player is of utmost importance to Lorraine Park, area director of Golden Door Resort Spas, based in the Golden Door Spa at The Boulders in Carefree, Ariz. “My ideal therapist is customer-focused and has a fair amount of modalities, not just your basic Swedish. They need to be flexible and understand the ever-growing changes that happen on a consistent basis in a spa. They must be flexible with a client who can’t make up their mind about a body treatment. They need to understand it’s about the guest’s time and what does that guest want and make it happen. If therapists can’t deal with change in the spa business, it’ll be difficult for them,” Park says.

What Does a Massage Therapist Want?
Bodyworkers want to be rewarded and recognized for their skills, as well as compensated fairly. “Massage therapists need to be in an environment where they feel safe and where their voice is heard,” Park says. “They need to be allowed to express some of their creativity and their skill set, yet they can’t be stifled. For me, an example of how to obtain this is that at the Golden Door we obviously have protocols with body treatments and products, but what type of stroke the client needs is left to the therapist to decide. During our custom massage, for example, our therapist is required to do the same opening stroke, use the eye pillow, and close with very distinct strokes, then wipe the feet and put the slippers on. But what is done in the 50 or 80 minutes of massage allows them to be creative and use all of their modalities they’ve learned. Ultimately, they make the decision with the client; it empowers them. It’s not what the spa director says it’s going to be.

Michael Stusser, founder of Osmosis Enzyme Bath & Massage in Freestone, Calif. says “Massage therapists are the spa business. I have a tremendous appreciation for people who are doing bodywork. They’re a category of folks who are fiercely independent. By choice, they’ve segmented themselves away from the proclivities of the business world because in their heart and soul they’re trying to do something altruistic. It’s hard for them to sit and mesh in the cogs of the business-like environment.

“We’ve worked with them to honor their originality, their creativity, and we’ve tried to really set up an environment where they’ll feel quite comfortable expressing their authentic selves in their work,” Stusser says. “The prevailing mentality in the industry is the spa needs to very carefully monitor and train their therapists so all massages are consistent and follow the same pattern. In many places, massage therapists need to wear a uniform and often a name badge, and it’s really hard for these people to fit into this. At Osmosis, we really do see the independent nature of MTs, so we structure things so they don’t have to come to work if they’re having a bad hair day. The last thing you want to do is get a massage from someone who doesn’t want to come to work. We have it set up so our therapists are on call, and they have the option to substitute out their work if they need to. If it’s a day that someone’s wrists are hurting, if it’s a day they’re going to be honoring themselves and their souls by going to the beach, they should.”

What Does the Spa-Goer Want?
Spa-goers want treatments that deliver, and they want their money’s worth. Why do consumers go to a spa in the first place? According to the ISPA 2003 Spa-Goer Study, 68 percent go to relieve stress or feel relaxed; 93 percent of spa-goers said they felt better after their last spa visit. Massage is hands down the most-requested spa treatment. Spa-goers, according to this study, are an active, healthy, confident group. More than four out of five, or 82 percent of them, believe in a higher being, while 75 percent believe prayer and meditation improves overall well-being. These beliefs mirror the rise in various forms of energy treatments. “I’m seeing a rise in energy work and an awareness of spas and taking care of oneself,” says Alison Howland, director of spa development for the Aveda Corporation in Minneapolis, Minn. “Consumers are becoming much more discriminating with whom they see and what the treatment is. Massage therapists need to grow themselves and their craft. When I started in the business, massage wasn’t a household word, and now it is,” she says. “People who’ve never tried massage are getting them on a regular basis, and they’re seeing the health benefits. It used to be a luxury for the elite, but now people are pursuing massage for their own health and well-being.”

In the recent Men’s Spa Survey conducted by KSL Resorts, 51 percent of men visit a spa to reduce mental stress, 62 percent to reduce physical stress. Eighty-three percent of these men chose massage as the treatment of choice at a spa; 18 percent chose couples massage. When asked which treatment they’d like to experience, 62 percent replied massage; 41 percent said body wrap or body scrub; and 38.5 percent said couples massage. Another interesting statistic from this survey: 46.5 percent of men prefer female therapists, compared to 12 percent who prefer male therapists.

Spa-goers also want simplicity in a spa menu’s offerings. “Guests appreciate this because they’re generally overwhelmed and don’t like the decision-making process of choosing treatments,” says Ginny Michel-Lopis, vice president and owner of JGL Spa Design and Consulting in Hawley, Penn. “It’s very much in keeping with a common message in today’s world, which is simplify, simplify, simplify. It’s hard to get a grasp on difficult menus when you’re a spa director for eight months and your massage therapists haven’t worked with you for that long. Some big spas have 100 therapists. How do you know who does what?”

Changes and Misconceptions
Years ago, and I’ve been a therapist since 1980, there was a real distinction between a massage therapist who was a bodyworker and a massage therapist who worked in a clinic and would never be caught dead putting mud on someone,” says Tara Grodjesk, president of Tara Spa Therapy in Carmel, Calif. “Spa treatments were looked at as froufrou and superficial, and as having nothing to do with wellness, structural bodywork, or the mechanics of the body. Obviously that has changed dramatically.” Grodjesk’s company has trained thousands of massage therapists over the years, and she has witnessed the evolution of those therapists who at one time would not perform any body treatments. “There’s a growing number of massage schools integrating spa therapies into their curriculum, so I would say the new generations of massage therapists are coming out of school with some exposure to spa therapies and also a growing interest in working in spas.”

The biggest change Howland has seen is the massage therapist gaining more credibility. “Before, massage was looked at as something special one would do for themselves. Now people are looking at massage as a necessity to handle stress. Massage therapists are an integral part of a spa experience, and the spa industry is taking the massage therapist more seriously now. The amount of training that’s offered for massage has increased as well, and there are so many different aspects, including reiki, craniosacral, and shiatsu.”

For massage therapist Deborah Evans, general manager of Red Mountain Spa in Ivins, Utah, the biggest change she’s seen in her 23 years in the business is “the industry has moved from a granola, small industry to a sophisticated, competitive industry that is now mainstream.” The spa industry, she says, continues to redefine itself and industry crossover continues to spread. Concordia adds, “The word spa is the most powerful word of the decade. But do people really know what that word is or what it means?”

Evans, who has been in the spa industry for 23 years (19 of which she has served as a general manager), actually became a massage therapist because she felt she was unable to effectively communicate to her staff upon the departure of a spa director. She had to fill in as spa director for three months, until the position was filled. “I was horribly frustrated,” she recalls, “and did not understand what motivates a therapist.” Evans spent $5,000 and six months of night and weekend massage school classes to earn her license. “It was the best thing I ever did for my career and for my own personal journey. It changed the way I approached the therapists, my ability to understand the work, my communication and expectations of the therapists.”

Just what is the biggest concern for massage therapists entering the market? Gordon Tareta, director of spa operations for Hyatt Hotels Corporation in Chicago, a corporation that employs close to 1,000 massage therapists in the United States, finds that many therapists enter the spa industry because they want to help people. “In a resort or day spa, the opportunity to build a consistent clientele and help to improve a condition and see progression is more limited,” he notes. “In a physiotherapy office, there is more of a diagnosis and progression. In my experience, many therapists love to see the improvement, and it is quite rewarding. Many thrive in a spa setting and others in a clinical setting. I think the therapist needs to clearly understand both and do some soul-searching. This is an opportunity for the schools.”

Toni Nurnberg, spa director of Sedona Rouge Spa in Sedona, Ariz., says, “I think the massage industry is in trouble because you don’t see the schools today offering different levels of education, such as a bachelor’s or master’s degree.” Nurnberg, a massage therapist and former massage school founder, says it’s hard for a spa director to really know the training level and knowledge of a massage therapist. “If an esthetician comes to me and says she is a CIDESCO diplomat (a marker of an advanced skin care professional), I know what that means. We don’t have those levels of differentiation within the massage industry.”

Special Challenges
Michel-Lopis believes the spa industry has contributed to the decline of good spa treatments and bodywork by expanding the number of options on their menu. At some point the selections are so extensive that massage therapists can’t do 100 things well. “They’ve done it in an effort to do something new and creative, but it’s not well-thought through,” she says. “Sometimes these treatments have no substance, and I think it’s embarrassing for therapists to do them. I’ve had treatments where a therapist has said, ‘I don’t know what this is supposed to really do.’” Combine that with the fact that a growing number of therapists are having a reaction to certain lotions and oils that are used in all of these body treatments. “I do have a concern to their exposure to healing agents,” Grodjesk says. “I also believe it’s the water-dispersable massage oils that are causing some of the problems because they strip the natural oils from the skin.” The physical challenges aside, Grodjesk’s biggest challenge is ensuring we don’t lose the art of massage therapy, the art of bodywork. She believes this is being overshadowed by today’s newfangled body treatments. “We need to come back to the quality of touch,” she says. “From an industry perspective, when developing their programs, spa managers and directors can’t lose sight of this.” It’s great to have a range of body treatments, but it’s equally important (if not more so) to have a solid foundation of technical competency in bodywork modalities.

Close echoes her sentiments. “In general, right now there are a lot of schools cranking out a lot of students, and what I’ve seen is a decrease in the quality of touch.” Close recalls attending school in the early 1980s, when she says massage students were truly interested in the healing arts. “Now you have people going to school because they’re part-time actors or whatever, and this is just a quick way to make money. That’s just a different intention.”

Is there a newer, hungrier breed of therapists who are only out to make a buck in the ever-expanding spa world? “More and more people are going to massage schools and choosing this as a career because the compensation has been so attractive,” says McCarthy who notes that as more therapists come into the market, the commissions and comp plans are beginning to go down. “It’s a combination of the fact that there are more massage therapists coming on to the market and that spa owners and operators are realizing that in order for their business to succeed in a more competitive marketplace, they need to become more profitable. Paying a 50 percent commission to massage therapists is too big a piece of the pie to survive.” This is a natural evolution, believes McCarthy, who says in today’s market MTs won’t be able to reap some of the monetary benefits they did a few years ago. The best way to address this? “Spa owners and directors will have to be more creative and include nonmonetary benefits and perks in order to maintain and attract the best-qualified staff,” says McCarthy, who oversees 70 massage therapists on the La Costa staff (up from 40 just two years prior).

“Those who go into massage because they think it’s a moneymaker, they don’t last long,” Nurnberg says. “Massage changes people. You can’t go through a massage program and not come out a different person. It works on your body, mind, and soul.”

Amy McDonald, spa program director at El Monte Sagrado Living Resort & Spa in Taos, N.M., and former spa director of Miraval Life in Balance, isn’t happy with the new type of therapists she is seeing. “Toward the end of my time at Miraval, around three years ago, I began to see a new breed of therapist coming out of school. These therapists smoke cigarettes and eat bad food. Somehow, their paradigm shifted. I’m a therapist, that’s how I started my career. I’m dedicated to my own personal growth and overall well-being. But now, these new therapists are in it for the money.”

Their intention, McDonald says, is to work in a spa, do as many massages as possible, make a lot of money, travel the world, and move on to something else. “Schools have a responsibility to really filter out some of those people,” she says. “Those students don’t learn anything about spirituality or nutrition. Schools don’t want to touch those topics, and this lowers the level of the guest experience tremendously. To me, schools need to bridge that gap and more spa directors and owners need to be on boards of schools, but I think curriculums are missing the soulfulness.”

Adds Joe Conant, principal of Chicago-based Inova Group, a company that creates and implements spa operating systems, “Typically, any time you go over 50 percent labor cost, you’re working for the therapist, the therapist is not working for the spa. We teach therapists how a business model is created and how the compensation model has been established from that model. Everyone thinks spas are drowning in tons of money; they don’t know that margins are very tight. We show the therapist how they will make money in the business so that they have an understanding of how they fit in, and that’s really critical in establishing trust, which is the basis of any relationship.”

Schools, in general, are a major source of frustration for spa directors. “The schools are pushing students out too quickly,” Park says. “They’re not learning the anatomy and physiology we need them to know. And they are not learning that the customer service skills are as important as the strokes skills when it comes to working in the spa portion of the business. In the spa and hotel business, we are first and foremost in the hospitality business, and they must learn those skills. It’s all about customer service. We’re talking basic ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘how may I assist you?’” Annette Sandford Lopez, director of the health club and The Spa at Charleston Place, Charleston Place, S.C., adds she is very frustrated with the massage schools in South Carolina. “Most students come out of school with the basics, but very few schools teach body treatments. It’s almost like an esthetician coming out of esthetics school without knowing how to wax. For example, nearly all spas offer hot stone massage, but very few massage schools teach that. We have to hire someone just to teach our therapists how to do that.” The Spa at Charleston Place has 20 massage therapists, all on a commission basis (they receive between 35 percent and 40 percent of the service charge, plus gratuities).

Working Better Together
So, can spas and massage therapists coexist? Evans believes so. “Spas give massage therapists the opportunity to take their practice to another level,” she says. “Adding the wide realm of potential spa services enhances a therapist’s knowledge of biochemical elements and the use of hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, thalassotherapy, etc. It also allows a practitioner to balance the physical nature of massage work with spa therapies, allowing therapists to work longer in the field and assist in preventing overuse injuries.” On the other hand, a spa director, Evans notes, should have a working knowledge of spa therapies, skin care, and massage therapies. “Without this knowledge, there is a gap in the understanding of the work. A spa director should also recognize therapists often are kinesthetic and the use of emotional or feeling words is the best way to communicate and to teach. Spa directors who use visual or auditory communication styles never truly connect with the therapists.”

Michel-Lopis adds, “The spa industry needs to take responsibility for training and inspiring therapists. Some great people leave the field because they can’t find spa positions that inspire them, or there are spas that fail to protect their massage therapists.” Michel-Lopis is speaking of the therapists who enter the field with a ton of enthusiasm and who work all the time and then burn out. “They may not have the best judgment for how much they can do and how long they can do it for,” she says. “We have a responsibility to be responsible in managing therapists. We need to inspire them through additional training opportunities and continuing education, as well as opportunities to make them feel a part of the organization.” It’s not uncommon for massage therapists to feel a bit separate, especially when they’re all contracted and never get to be part of the philosophy of the property, or feel the path they’re all on together — things that help keep people motivated and inspired.

There are a number of ways to work together for a more beneficial union. “First, both need to work to understand each other better,” Tareta says. “The massage industry quite often is treatment/condition-oriented, and the spa can be more relaxation/experience-oriented, depending on the spa. Massage schools need to better prepare students for this industry. Exposure to customer service training, etiquette, spa history, types of spas, etc., would be a start. The criteria are too different from state to state, country to country, and city to city. If there was one national body, it would blow open the doors for opportunity, level the playing field, and raise the bar in quality.”

Education is undoubtedly key. “Until there’s been consolidation within education, the key is that the school and spa industry come together and have a single message — what expectations are, what compensation is. This will be a crucial piece,” says Jeff Kohl, principal of Spa and Club Ideations and past president of ISPA. “If spas can’t get massage therapists, it will hurt the industry. If massage therapists don’t go to spas, the schools will hurt. The industry needs to address this.”

New Breed of Schools
To satisfy the growing demand for therapists trained in spa therapies, many companies have added massage education to their curriculum. Some have done this with the primary intention of staffing their own operations, others of creating creating a higher standard of education. Here’s a look at three of the industry’s leaders.

Cortiva Institute
“We’re basically the umbrella company of Cortiva that now owns nine massage schools across the United States,” explains Diane Trieste, vice president of spa and education at the New York City-based company, and former director of spa and product development at Canyon Ranch Health Resorts. Each of the nine purchased schools has been in existence for 20-plus years, and each has its own distinct identity.

“We’re not looking to take away any of the schools’ identities,” Trieste says. “We’re looking to combine everybody and use knowledge and leadership to carry on. A lot of large, vocational schools are coming out with massage therapy programs, so Cortiva Institute is trying to maintain the culture of massage and the quality of education. We’re acquiring many schools so we can combine all the teaching knowledge and leadership under one roof and be able to offer a higher standard of education for the public at large.”

Cortiva now has 20,000 alumni and is focusing on job placement and career paths. Industry estimates say nearly 50 percent of therapists leave the industry after two years because of lack of skill or placement opportunities, among other things, Trieste notes. “We plan on being able to be a liaison with our graduates and keep our family of people in the health and wellness fields.”

How does Cortiva plan on accomplishing this? In addition to being very proactive with employers from resorts to spas to hospitals, Cortiva has launched a national job board, is introducing a free graduate series, and is implementing a new 60-hour Spa Foundation Course — not about technique, but about the history, guests services, and physiological effects of spa.

“This course will give therapists an insight into spas so that when they go and work in a spa they’re not surprised about education, work environment, or pay.” Cortiva is not trying to create a cookie cutter, Trieste emphasizes. “This isn’t like a school with 20 branches; that’s why we call ourselves an institute. Every environment has its own personality. We’re unifying all these little schools that were in competition. They’re now one big family. There’s information exchange. We have a group of people within each school that is just phenomenal.” To date, there is not a cap on schools. “In a two-year period, we can double our size without purchasing another school,” Trieste says.

Elizabeth Grady School of Massage Therapy
The Elizabeth Grady School of Esthetics launched in 1975 and, to date, operates 40 namesake salons, with 12 sites opening in the last 15 months, according to John Walsh, president and CEO. It graduates close to 200 estheticians a year. Last year alone, the skin care salons served more than 400,000 customers at both its company-owned stores and franchises. This past year, it launched its own School of Massage Therapy (based in Medford, Mass.), something Walsh had been considering for the past six years. “We took a considerable amount of time and due diligence,” he says. “We wanted to find out how massage could be brought from the massage parlor connotation to the forefront, and we wanted to see how we could input it into our own skin care salons — to go ahead and not only do it from a therapeutic perspective, but from a skin care perspective. We wanted to explore how massage is good for the skin.” He also wants to increase his customer ratio for men. “Men appreciate massage,” Walsh says.

Walsh hopes to create a new breed of therapist — one skilled as a massage therapist and proficient in the skin component. “It’s not going to be a hope or a dream, it will be a reality,” he says with determination. “We’re going to train highly-skilled expertly-trained massage therapists who not only know all
massage components, but know about the benefits of massage, and additionally will know all about the skin and how certain body washes, oils, and gels affect the skin as well.”

The company will hire top candidates from each class to staff its skin care salons. According to Walsh, 99 percent of his estheticians have a job prior to graduation. The 750-hour program costs $9,000 and takes a year to complete. Graduates can take their national certification exam, enabling them to work in most states. School director Cate Tool says, “One of the trends we’ve seen in our esthetics schools is a rise in massage therapists enrolling in esthetics programs. This started within the last two to three years, so now we’ve designed a program that will allow a student to get dual-licensed.” They can do this in a year for $16,000. The majority of students who enroll at Elizabeth Grady do so with the goal of working for the company, Tool says. “Some want to have a franchise, some want to work in a spa, some in a medical practice, some on a cruise ship, some want their own practice. Flexibility is a huge issue.”

Steiner Leisure Limited
A worldwide provider of spa services, Steiner operates spas and salons on 118 cruise ships, as well as in 52 resort spas and two day spas. Also on its roster are three post-secondary schools comprised of a total of seven campuses. Steiner offers degree and nondegree programs in massage therapy and skin care, and places many of its graduates within its company. To date, more than 7,000 students have graduated from its massage therapy programs, while more than 3,000 have graduated from its skin care programs.

In early 2005, a new program offering an associate degree in fitness massage was introduced. “Most of our programs exceed the state hours,” says Tod Gibbs, chief operating officer of Steiner Education Group, in Pompano Beach, Fla. “We work extremely close with our employers to find out what they need. A simple massage therapist is easy to find, but we are able to send them out also with skin, fitness, and other modalities, offering their employers a lot more. We now have a bachelor’s of science in spa management we launched in 2005. It will teach industry, management training, and business courses, in addition to classic core classes.”

According to Gibbs, approximately 20 percent of graduates go on to positions within Steiner.

The Pros and Cons
While there continues to be a proliferation of schools with spa programs, it seems many have the intent of pumping out graduates in order to staff their own facilities. Kohl hopes that Cortiva can bring consistency to education and continue to raise the level of education. “If there’s a partnership between the spa industry and Cortiva it would be beneficial to therapists and facilities,” he says. “I think what we have is an industry that’s seen phenomenal growth, and more people are getting involved in the industry that may not have had as much experience with therapists as some who have been around a while.”

Adds Glen Colarossi, president of Colarossi Spa & Health Club Consulting & Management in Stamford, Conn., “Conceptually, I think Cortiva’s a great idea. No one’s done a roll up like that before, and I think the curriculum will have quite a few pieces that have been missing from a business perspective. There’s such a drought to find good, qualified people. Stay tuned.”

Evans also believes programs like these will raise the bar for the industry. “The majority of spas rely on product vendors for education,” she says. “This is often based on product knowledge and a set protocol for treatments. The piece that is usually missing is the physiological and biochemical effects of the treatments. Turning massage therapists into spa therapists should consist of more than teaching how to do a wrap and a salt glow.”

The best aspect of companies such as Cortiva is that they’re taking the combined star power of their top schools and creating a massive job tank, Nurnberg says. The worst aspect, she believes, is the threat of mediocrity. “Look at these great [massage school] owners like Bob King who sold out of Chicago and Margaret Avery Moon who sold the Desert Institute [which Nurnberg cofounded years ago]. They put their whole lives and reputations into these schools, and now to have an owner who is not a therapist, who doesn’t really know what it takes to make a good therapist. My fear would be that the schools will start settling for mediocrity and inefficiency. They just don’t know. Margaret and I always said that to create a good therapist you had to teach the whole person. The emotional person, the spiritual person, and the physical person.”

Happily Ever After?
More spas keep opening, and it would be shortsighted to not think about where your future staffing is going to come from,” McCarthy says. “Therapists are the lifeblood of the spa. If you don’t have good therapists, no one comes in your door — or they don’t come back.” Spa directors must seriously consider where and how they are going to find great therapists in order to make their business succeed. McCarthy believes a good way to do this is to find a good school that will ensure the spa has a steady stream of good therapists in order to protect the sustainability of the business.

It’s obvious that spas are here to stay. “I think there will never be enough spas,” Trieste says. “Part of life is going to be massage and spas. Statistics show people are going more and more to spas to get massages; it’s more convenient and massage is still the No. 1 service. Spas aren’t going away. The biggest problem I see is people aren’t smart enough to manage the spas. We need people who understand where these massage therapists are coming from — where their education evolves from and how they’ve learned to provide the right massage for each individual. If managers can understand that, then they can manage better. You don’t have to be a psych major, you just have to have some insight and give acknowledgment.”

Adds Stusser, “I hear so many complaints about how hard massage therapists are to work with and how they don’t conform to certain standards of the business. As long as that is your story about your experience, that will continue to be your experience. We need to embrace therapists in a broader context and realize they are in fact the lifeblood of the industry. They’re like guardian angels. Recognize these people are your most valuable asset, rather than the most difficult aspect of your business to deal with.”

Mary Bemis is a leading spa critic and writer who regularly lectures on spa trends. She is the founder of Insidersguidetospas.com and the spa adviser to Shape magazine. Reach her at marybemis@insidersguidetospas.com.

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