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Malls seek spas to cash in on wellness craze

By Edmund Mander

Mall day spas offer massage and other treatments.

Origins Spa Tea Room and Garden at NorthPark Center in Dallas is a draw for professionals who work nearby as well as people attending conventions in the area.

Some malls are discovering a new way to attract and keep shoppers: Slip them into bathrobes, slather them in mud, lay them down flat and pound on their bodies.
In an age of growing wealth, health consciousness and work pressure, day spas and malls have a wonderful future together, say industry professionals.

“It’s being driven by the infatuation, if not obsession, that customers have with their well-being,” according to Herbert A. Leeds, president of Leeds Business Counseling, a Miami-based consultant to developers and retailers, predicting that day spas are set to become hotly sought after by developers. “All we need is for one or two major centers to get them and you bet that others are going to follow.”

That already appears to be happening: Some mall operators either have spas as tenants or are seeking them. Robert D. Riedy, CLS, vice president at The Rouse Co., Columbia, Md., identified day spas as a strong new trend when asked recently about up-and-coming star quality tenants in today’s malls, and other shopping center professionals agree. The tendency is being driven by affluent, health-conscious baby boomers, they say.

“The baby boomers are the strongest generation economically in our country, and they have the aptitude and appetite for maintaining their bodies and beings,” said Candace K. Rice, SCMD/CLS, senior vice president of leasing at Newport Beach, Calif.-based Donahue Schriber.

A 3,000-square-foot spa will be part of The Summit at Scottsdale, a 350,000-square-foot community lifestyle center Donahue Schriber is opening in northern Scottsdale, Ariz., in the spring, she said.

Spas are good for malls, observers say, giving shoppers another destination and a reason to stay longer. Origins Spa Tea Room and Garden, which was opened last year by the beauty products chain Origins Natural Resources at NorthPark Center in Dallas, is a draw for professionals working in the vicinity as well as those attending conventions in the city, according to Melody Kamp, the center’s marketing director.
Origins is a division of New York City-based Estée Lauder, which also runs a spa at the mall’s Neiman-Marcus store under the Lauder name.

The 2,600-square-foot Origins spa offers head-to-toe treatments, one of them called “100 Minutes of Pure Heaven” that involves “a massage, a facial and exfoliating body scrub with essential oils, botanical essences and extracts,” according to the company’s description. Customers can sip a variety of exotic teas while overlooking an outdoor sculpture garden.

“They make very successful and very nice additions to the mall,” Kamp said of the two spas. “We’re seeing the spa is an attractive amenity both for men and for women.”
Nevertheless, some spa operators, at least, have reservations about mall locations.

“Malls are a little tricky,” said Kelly Weber, senior vice president of marketing at Elizabeth Arden, explaining that clients who have just spent an hour wrapped in seaweed usually aren’t looking their best, and are in no mood to mingle. “Generally our clients don’t like high-traffic areas.”
However, a separate entrance could take care of all that, enabling customers to exit straight into the parking lot, Weber noted. “It would be terrific because then people could scoot in and out.”
Spas also are expensive to run, at least for companies whose business is primarily products, and do not rack up the profits of the beauty stores, according to industry insiders.
The Origins store at NorthPark has the highest sales in the chain, even outstripping its New York City location, said Tracy Orr, a spokeswoman for Origins. The company opened the spa at the suggestion of customers and mall officials, she added.
So far, NorthPark is one of two Origins spas, and the only one in a mall. Currently there are no plans to open more, Orr said.

Estée Lauder also is very selective about where it opens spas under its own names, too, choosing upscale department store partners in high-income markets, said Annette Sandford-Lopez, director of spa marketing at Estée Lauder. To date, the company has nine day spas in the United States, six of which are in mall department stores.

Despite Elizabeth Arden’s reservations, the New York City-based company is dipping its toe into malls; at press time, it had signed a letter of intent to go into The Westchester, Simon Property Group’s upscale mall in White Plains, N.Y., Weber said. Besides its street locations in places like New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago, Elizabeth Arden also has several spots in strip centers.

But malls have a lot to offer spa operators, providing a showcase for their products, said Chris LeTourneur, senior consultant at Thomas Consultants, an international retail development consulting firm based in Vancouver, B.C. Like hairdressers, spas represent a “powerful [services-retail] combination,” he said.
This is a strong argument behind Origins’ spa at NorthPark, according to Lynne Greene, president of Origins Natural Resources.

“Our Origins Feel-Good spas not only provide consumers with an environment that’s 100% relaxed, they have also proven to be a very effective way to bring our products to life,” she said, in a statement provided through Orr. “We’ve found that the spa experience gives our customers initial exposure to a peaceful moment of serenity, and once they are able to feel the benefits, they are more apt to recreate it at home using our products.”
Spas can be a versatile tenant, in that they come in a range of sizes, from about 1,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet, depending on the services they provide, Donahue Schriber’s Rice said. But day spas do not belong everywhere, she added.

“I wouldn’t recommend a spa in a moderate market,” she said, explaining that they are expensive and labor-intensive to run. But day spas make good tenants in upscale or lifestyle community centers, or in regional shopping centers surrounded by densely populated areas; they also make sense in centers frequented by tourists, because people on vacation are already in a mood to pamper themselves, she said.

The public is going to be seeing a lot more of day spas, and not just at the malls. Suzanne LeTourneau, president and CEO of O2raoxygen Wellness Spa, has opened a location at Calgary (Alberta, Canada) International Airport, is scheduled to open another at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport in December and plans to install one in Detroit when construction of a new terminal is completed there some time next year. Airports make ideal locations for spas, offering unending streams of potential customers who are stressed, bored, uncomfortable and crying out for pampering, she said. Malls are not part of her plan, at least for the time being, LeTourneau added.

“The chaos of the airport and the stress of having to check in is not fun,” LeTourneau said, explaining that a breath of oxygen, a massage and a manicure can do wonders for air rage.

Fortunately for the day spa industry, chaos and stress are not confined to airports. Herein lies an opportunity, industry professionals say, to make the mall a refuge from the bustle of everyday life.

“People are very busy these days, and the spa experience is a way to relax,” NorthPark’s Kamp said. And, with day spas no longer the exclusive preserve of the rich, what better place to put them than in a mall. “It’s becoming a lot more mainstream.”

Day spas enhance a mall’s image, fitting in nicely with sumptuous marble common areas, attractive indoor landscaping and tastefully appointed department stores, all of which help make the shopper feel indulged and pampered, those in the industry say. As such, a trip to the mall becomes something of a treat.

“Everyone being time poor may not have the time to take a week off to go to a spa resort,” said LeTourneur of Thomas Consultants. “But they have time to go to a center; it takes them away from their daily life for a brief amount of time and gives them this renewal experience.”