The Problem With a 100-Item Spa Menu (And What to Offer Instead)

One mistake I see hotel, spas and wellness spaces make all the time is providing far too many options on their menu. Here’s why….

Firstly, too many options means that your team become generalists at everything and excellent at none. Think about, a staff member leaves, you need to train someone else - this way its done is differently from their last place, so they’re learning. By the time they’ve actually learned all the options, and are doing them well - they may have already moved on. But even if they do stay - if you are constantly doing a huge variety of treatments, they’ll never been done as well as a smaller number of treatments done well.

Secondly, fewer treatments means that staff can guide people clearly in terms of the transformation or change they offer people. It is so much harder to guide 50 offers versus 10, for example. If staff are guiding people clearly, you’ll have a much higher uptake on these add ons.

Thirdly, the people who come into your space live in a very noisy world where there’s millions of options as they open their Spotify to listen to music, thousands of opinions are they scroll Instagram, hundreds of possibilities for every decision they make each day. People don’t come to a ‘wellness’ focused space for more noise, they come to escape it. So a spa menu with 100 options, an exercise table of 30 possibilities and 10 workshops on different wellness topics - is absolutely not helping reduce the noise. It creates unnecessary overwhelm. To the point, that it can actually stop making decisions because of choice overload.

Here's why this isn't just a hunch. There's a well known study where shoppers were offered a table of jam to sample. One version had 24 flavours. The other had 6. More people stopped to look at the 24 flavour table. But almost none of them bought. The 6 flavour table saw ten times more purchases.

More choice draws attention. It doesn't drive decisions. Often, it stalls them. And there's a reason for that. Every option a person compares takes mental effort. Working out which of 50 treatments might suit them, weighing each one against the last, holding all of that in mind at once. That's real cognitive load, and it adds up fast. Your guests are already carrying a full day of decisions before they reach you. What to wear. What to eat. What to reply to. Add fifty more choices to a treatment menu, and you're adding to that load, not offering more value. A shorter menu removes that cost. Guests can move straight from what they want to feel, to a treatment that gets them there. Without comparing, second-guessing or mental math.

We’re used to so many options for us everywhere. So often people feel they need to provide more options and to cater for everyone. But if you have streamlined options, e.g a maximum of 10 treatment options, 5 exercise classes, 3 workshops (of course, this is dependant on the size of your space!!) - your team will become more experienced quicker encouraging guests to return and share these experiences, they’ll be able to translate the transformation clearer encouraging guests to book, and the guests will feel calmer, more at ease - therefore providing that transformation you want to provide for them.

So I encourage you today, think about the offers you provide - does it feel reasonable for your space? How often to guests book the add ons after speaking to your staff? How often do they book full stop?

If you want a little more help in exploring this, start with signing up for a free Self Audit to look at your offers with fresh eyes. For a little more, book a free consult call and let’s chat through options to support you making this decision🌿