As the owner of a day spa, one of your top priorities should be making sure every customer feels comfortable, safe, and welcome at your establishment. Spas provide services to people of all shapes and sizes regardless of their limitations or ability levels.
With that in mind, is your spa as accessible and inclusive as it should be? How long has it been since you’ve considered the variety of customers coming through your doors — or perhaps people who can’t because you don’t have what they need?
Let’s look at how you can audit your spa for accessibility and inclusivity and ensure you’re fostering a welcoming environment that will keep your customers coming back.
Training Your Staff
One of the first steps toward inclusivity is making sure your entire team is on the same page. It’s possible to train your staff not to be discriminatory. Implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training, as well as sensitivity training, can help your staff make every customer feel more welcome. Rather than just giving out handbooks or sending emails about what to do and not to do, consider practicing specific scenarios with your staff and ask them how they would handle certain situations.
Embracing Diversity
Everyone deserves a relaxing spa day, no matter their ethnicity or background. However, people of different ethnicities might benefit from different treatments. It’s important that you educate yourself so you can provide culturally-informed care. Certain cultures and belief systems may not allow for specific practices. While your customers can tell you that, they’ll feel more welcomed if you already have an awareness of their needs.
Creating an Inclusive Environment
People of all shapes and sizes will come into your spa, and they all deserve the same positive treatment and respect. Creating a fat-friendly environment is a great way to remove “plus-size” labels and help larger individuals feel comfortable getting the spa treatments they deserve.
If your business currently utilizes any measurement of weight or BMI with customers, consider dropping those practices. Weight and BMI aren’t necessarily inclusive and accurate measures of a person’s health, and they typically don’t matter when it comes to the average spa treatment. You can also create a fat-friendly environment by:
- Offering size-inclusive robes;
- Making sure your facilities have enough space;
- Hiring a diverse staff of different sizes and body types.
In addition to larger customers, you should also be open to welcoming spa-goers with disabilities or mobility issues. Many of those individuals likely aren’t used to getting pampered. They might not even feel comfortable at first because there aren’t many spas that promote accessibility and inclusion.
Do your research on the latest ADA regulations, and design your business to be as wheelchair-friendly as possible by installing ramps, creating larger spaces, and putting in stability bars in bathroom and tub areas. You could even transform certain rooms specifically for clients with mobility issues, so they feel completely at ease.
If your spa isn’t as accessible and inclusive as it could be, you’re missing out on a large audience. Beyond that, however, you’re doing those with different body types and people with different backgrounds an injustice. If you really want your spa to be a place for everyone to relax, consider some of these options in the near future.
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