Touch and Go: Struggles in B.C.'s Spa Industry

Image by: Nik West

The treatments read like items from a foodie’s pantry: the chocolate soak, the maple-sugar scrub, the coconut-mango massage. “Body workers” pass guests cooling cucumber water as they enter relaxation lounges stocked with herbal teas, gossip mags and fireside designer sofas. The modern spa is no longer the domain of the stern esthetician in the backroom of a hair salon; it’s a destination unto itself. The sort of cushy, decadent stuff that frazzled mothers, stagette organizers and corporate-retreat planners count on for a bit of good clean fun – and a buff and polish too.

So when did spa become a dirty word? Jenn Houtby-Ferguson knows exactly when everything changed: “March 11, 2009.”

Houtby-Ferguson, sales and marketing director at Tigh-Na-Mara Seaside Spa Resort and Conference Centre in Parksville, had arrived home to hear an 11-o’clock news story about government officials living the high life at a luxury resort on the island. The message of the newscast was pretty clear: in dire economic times like these, was this an appropriate use of taxpayers’ dollars? “I thought, please don’t be about Tigh-Na-Mara,” she says.

The resort had been riding a record wave of bookings in January: rooms were at capacity and the spa was filled. It looked like it was going to successfully weather the downturn that had left other businesses reeling.

As it turned out, the resort in question was Brentwood Bay, though it needn’t have mattered. A follow-up story in Victoria’s Times Colonist the next day was pretty damning: “As jobless numbers mount and stock markets plummet, Canada’s top agriculture bureaucrats have retired to the luxury Brentwood Bay Lodge and Spa to discuss business over lobster at taxpayers’ expense.” Rack rates listed for the hotel – which top out at nearly $500 a night – contributed to the image of politicians lounging in fluffy bathrobes, talking “business” as massage therapists worked out their kinks.
 
The fallout was immediate: government groups pulled out of future bookings with Tigh-Na-Mara. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, but we were penalized because we had the word ‘resort’ in our name,” says Houtby-Ferguson, who explains that 25 per cent of Tigh-Na-Mara’s revenue comes from visitors to its spa. Indeed, half the spa patrons are overnight guests at the resort, so when resort bookings drop, the spa suffers. To capture the government market, Houtby-Ferguson explains, hotels follow Treasury Board guidelines, right down to meal plans that are specific to government-set per diems. But “in tough economic times,” she found out, the idea of taxpayers subsidizing retreats at Brentwood Bay and Tigh-Na-Mara may not be looked upon favourably by the struggling masses.

And that’s the point. In the U.S., it’s been coined the AIG effect: corporations may still be booking the meetings, the retreats and the conferences in hotels, but they can’t be seen to be enjoying it. Nothing fancy – and certainly no Belgian chocolate pedicure or Dead Sea seaweed wrap on their invoices. “You can’t say ‘spa’ anymore,” said Jan Freitag, vice-president of STR Global, a hotel industry research firm, at the New York Spa Alliance meeting in May of this year.

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