A hotel spa is underperforming when its treatment rooms sit empty for most of the day, few hotel guests use it, and nobody can show you last month's numbers. The seven signs below are all measurable, most of them in an afternoon with a booking-system export and the hotel's occupancy report. Each comes with how to measure it, a warning level and the first fix.
Sign 1: is treatment-room utilisation below 40%?
What it is. Utilisation is the share of available treatment hours you actually sell. Xotels gives the formula: hours of treatment sold divided by hours of treatment available. Five rooms open ten hours a day for seven days gives 350 available hours; sell 250 and utilisation is 71%.
Warning level. Horwath HTL's Spa Profitability Handbook (January 2020) says most successful spas run at treatment-room utilisation of between 40% and 60%. Below 40% for three months running, you have a demand or a sales problem, not a quiet patch.
First fix. Measure it by room and by hour before changing anything. Low in all rooms all day is a demand problem (signs 2 and 3); low in one room is usually a rota or menu problem.
Sign 2: do fewer than 5% of hotel guests book a treatment?
What it is. Hotel-guest capture is the share of in-house guests who use the spa. Horwath HTL puts the typical range for city hotels at 5% to 8%, rising to 10% to 18% for urban resorts and 20% to 35% at beach destinations.
How to measure. Treatments booked by in-house guests (room charge or a "hotel guest" tag in the booking system) divided by occupied rooms for the month.
First fix. Make the spa visible at the three moments guests decide: the pre-arrival email, check-in and the in-room screen or card, with booking and room charge from the room. Where a hotel has no spa, or the spa is full, in-room treatments capture demand the rooms cannot.
Sign 3: are weekday mornings empty?
What it is. Horwath HTL notes that for most spas, mornings are low-demand periods, with most treatments sold from late afternoon to close. That is normal; paying full therapist hours for an empty morning five days a week is not.
How to measure. A heat map of bookings by day and hour for the last 90 days. Trybe's 2025 data from 345 spas shows Monday with the most bookings but the lowest spend, and Saturday with fewer bookings but the highest spend, so look at revenue per hour, not just bookings.
First fix. Match the rota to the heat map first; that costs nothing. Then price by time. Most spas still charge the same at 10am as at 6pm; Trybe's 2026 benchmarking report found that only 18% of US spas use automated dynamic pricing, and gives no UK figure. A morning rate for locals, members and corporate neighbours fills hours that would otherwise earn nothing. This is the heart of our yield and commercial work.
Sign 4: do most new guests arrive through marketplaces and vouchers?
What it is. Marketplaces bring guests, at a price. Treatwell's UK partner page lists 35% commission plus VAT on a new client's first marketplace booking, 0% on repeat visits and 2.5% plus VAT on online pre-payments. Deep-discount voucher sites work in a similar way.
Illustrative example, not a quote. A £120 massage sold through a marketplace at 35% commission leaves £78 before VAT on the commission; sold through your own site or the front desk, it leaves £120. Over 100 new guests a month, that is a £4,200 gap.
How to measure. Revenue by sales channel, monthly. If more than a third of treatment revenue comes through commissioned channels and repeat bookings do not follow, you are renting guests rather than winning them.
First fix. Keep the marketplace for discovery, but make rebooking direct: an offer at checkout, your own booking link in every confirmation, and a guest list you actually email. Horwath HTL, citing Spa Executive (2018), puts the probability of selling to an existing customer at 60% to 70%, against 5% to 20% for a new one.
Sign 5: do therapists keep leaving?
What it is. The UK Spa Association's 2025 State of the Spa Industry survey of 108 sites found 35% of spas had unfilled therapist roles, down from 44% in 2024, and 11% had roles open for more than six months. A separate 2026 Therapist Wellbeing Report, surveying 159 UK and international spa, beauty and wellness practitioners, found one in three had considered leaving the industry, citing stress and burnout.
How to measure. Leavers in the last 12 months divided by average headcount. Track therapist utilisation too: Horwath HTL suggests below 50% points to overstaffing, above 75% may mean guests are being turned away, and above 80% leaves the team no time between treatments.
First fix. Ask the last three leavers why they left, and believe them. Then fix the rota: massage limits per day, real breaks, and a visible route to senior therapist. Where the hotel cannot carry a full team, spa staffing covers the gaps.
Sign 6: are review scores slipping?
What it is. Tripadvisor and Ipsos MORI's 2019 study of 23,292 Tripadvisor users across 12 markets found 81% always or frequently read reviews before booking accommodation, and 78% focus on the most recent reviews.
How to measure. Average score and review count for the spa on Tripadvisor and Google, month by month. Read the three-star ones; they say what to fix.
First fix. Reply to every review within 48 hours, by name. Then fix the top complaint, which is usually a wet-area or booking issue rather than the treatment itself. At Nagomi Spa & Health at Hotel Okura Amsterdam, this routine was part of taking the spa from #6 to #1 of Amsterdam's spas on Tripadvisor within eight months, and it is still #1.
Sign 7: does the spa manager do everything, with no monthly KPIs?
What it is. The spa manager treats, covers reception, does the rota and orders stock; reporting is what gets dropped. CBRE's 2025 analysis of 297 US hotels with spas found average spa revenue grew 1.4% in 2024 while labour costs rose 3.9%. That is a US figure, but the squeeze is familiar in London and Amsterdam too, and margins that thin need numbers every month, not at year end.
How to measure. Ask for last month's utilisation, hotel-guest capture, revenue per available treatment hour, average spend and labour cost as a share of revenue. If it takes more than a day to produce, the spa is run by feel.
First fix. A one-page monthly pack, same five numbers, same format, reviewed with the GM; our partner hotels see theirs live on a Trybe dashboard. If the manager has no time to produce it, that is the finding, and outsourced management exists for this reason.
How do you check all seven before the next owner meeting?
Warning levels are a guide drawn from the sources above; your own trend over three months matters more than any single threshold.
| Sign | How to measure | Warning level | Your number | First fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low utilisation | Treatment hours sold ÷ hours available | Below 40% | ____ % | Measure by room and hour; fix rota or demand |
| Low hotel-guest capture | In-house guest treatments ÷ occupied rooms | Below 5% (city hotel) | ____ % | Pre-arrival, check-in and in-room visibility |
| Empty weekday mornings | Revenue per hour by day and time | Mornings under half of afternoon | ____ | Rota to the heat map; off-peak pricing |
| Marketplace dependence | Revenue by sales channel | Over a third commissioned, little repeat | ____ % | Direct rebooking at checkout |
| Therapist turnover | Leavers ÷ average headcount, 12 months | Rising year on year; roles open 6+ months | ____ % | Exit conversations; rota and progression |
| Falling reviews | Monthly score and count, share mentioning spa | Score falling two months running | ____ | Reply within 48 hours; fix the top complaint |
| No monthly KPIs | Days to produce last month's five numbers | More than one day | ____ days | One-page pack, reviewed with the GM |
Frequently asked questions
How many signs mean the spa is in trouble? Two or more, sustained for a quarter, usually means the spa needs a plan rather than a push; one on its own is often seasonal.
What is a good utilisation rate for a hotel spa? Horwath HTL's benchmark is 40% to 60% of available treatment hours, so agree what counts as "available" before you compare.
What is a good hotel-guest capture rate? Horwath HTL puts city hotels at 5% to 8% of in-house guests, urban resorts at 10% to 18% and beach resorts at 20% to 35%, so judge a London or Amsterdam spa against the first band.
Can we fix this without changing the operating model? Often yes: signs 1, 3, 4 and 6 respond to rota, pricing and review discipline within months, if someone owns the numbers.
Do you work outside London and Amsterdam? Our spas are in London and Amsterdam; we open a new city with a hotel partner, not on spec.
A free spa review
If you recognised two or more of these signs, we would be glad to look at your numbers. Send three figures (rooms, treatment rooms, monthly spa revenue) for a free spa review and a founder will reply with what we would change, whether or not you work with us. More answers on our FAQ page.
Sources
- Horwath HTL, Spa Profitability Handbook, January 2020 (full report PDF)
- Xotels, KPIs for spa revenue management
- CBRE Hotels Research, The Role of Hotel Spa Departments, August 2025
- Hospitality Net, Trybe "The State of Spa Revenue: Global Benchmarks for 2026", October 2026
- European Spa Magazine, Trybe lead-time data from 345 spas, 2025, April 2026
- Treatwell UK, Partner plans and commission
- Leisure Opportunities, UK Spa Association State of the Spa Industry Survey 2025, July 2025
- Health Club Management, Therapist Wellbeing Report (Mind Body Touch Training with TPOT), July 2026
- Tripadvisor and Ipsos MORI, Online reviews remain a trusted source of information, July 2019
