Spa discounting: the race to the bottom comes with a robe and a glass of prosecco
Rising advertising costs make weak spa brand positioning more expensive. Matt Clutterham examines customer acquisition, pricing power and the commercial cost of teaching guests to wait for a deal.
By Matt Clutterham | Brand Strategist and Co-founder, Q Branch
The Business of Experience | Evidence reviewed 28 September 2026
Every day I open my email, I’m bombarded with spa discounts.
Another percentage off. Another package for two. Another glass of prosecco recruited to do the commercial heavy lifting that the brand apparently cannot.
By the time I’ve finished scrolling, I can remember the offers. I would struggle to tell you which spa sent which.
For businesses selling experiences, that is a miserable result. Money has been spent, creative has been approved and another campaign has gone out. What remains in the customer’s head is a price comparison.
In July, I wrote that most spa brands were killing the commercial viability of their own sector. It was a deliberately sharp argument about what happens when a category keeps presenting its businesses as interchangeable.
The problem with repeated spa discounting is straightforward: it reduces revenue per booking and can teach guests to wait for the next offer.
If customer acquisition costs rise at the same time, the business needs more bookings just to protect its contribution. A fuller diary can conceal a weaker business.
That is why spa marketing strategy belongs in a conversation about brand positioning, customer experience and profitability, with the leadership team at the table.
You end up paying more for the privilege of earning less from each visit.
Advertising costs are rising. What is your spa buying with the extra money?
The advertising market is certainly absorbing more money. AA/WARC’s refreshed April 2026 report puts UK advertising investment at £46.7 billion in 2025, up 6.4%. Within that dataset, social-media advertising investment rose 21%, while search rose 5.8%. These are market-wide figures, using the report’s updated channel definitions, rather than evidence that UK spas themselves increased spending by those amounts.
Ad spend is the total budget spent. Ad price measures what an impression or click costs. Customer acquisition cost measures the spend required to win a new customer.
Those figures answer different questions; a bigger advertising market can simply reflect more advertising being bought. But Meta also reported a 9% increase in its global average price per ad during 2025. That is a platform-wide measure, affected by the mix and performance of advertising; it does not mean every spa’s Instagram campaign became 9% more expensive.
Search provides another warning.
WordStream/LocaliQ’s 2025 study of 16,446 search campaigns, running from April 2024 to March 2025, found its overall cost-per-click benchmark increased 12.88%. Beauty and Personal Care recorded a 60.11% increase.
That broad category is not a UK spa benchmark, and a click is not a booking. The same study found improving conversion rates in many industries, demonstrating why higher click prices do not automatically mean worse commercial returns.
Nevertheless, a spa leadership team should be asking what it earns from the attention it buys, rather than assuming the next increase in budget will solve the problem.
A more efficient campaign can help. A compelling reason to choose the business gives that campaign something much more valuable to work with.
Are spa revenues falling? The evidence is more complicated
We also need to be honest about revenue.
The available evidence does not justify announcing that the entire spa sector is shrinking. Knight Frank’s review of UK hotel trading in 2025 found total revenue per available room at golf and spa hotels increased 4.2%. Payroll expenses per available room rose 6.6%, while gross operating profit per available room still grew 2.8%. Those are hotel-segment figures, including revenue beyond spa treatments, rather than standalone spa accounts.4
Across the Atlantic, ISPA’s PwC-conducted study reported US spa revenue of $23.5 billion in 2025, up 4.2%.
There is demand.
There are successful operators.
Neither fact gives an individual business permission to ignore deteriorating booking economics.
Zenoti’s 2026 spa benchmarks, show a more complicated picture underneath growth. New-guest visits fell 11% at membership spas and 8% at non-membership spas in 2025.
Membership spas’ same-store revenue growth slowed from 5% to 2%; non-membership spas’ growth improved from 2% to 3%.
Slower revenue growth is not falling revenue. Falling new-guest visits are not the same as falling total visits. And none of those figures proves that discounting caused the changes.
My argument is about the commercial vulnerability that sameness creates within that environment. When customers can see little reason to prefer you, you have fewer defences against price comparison, acquisition pressure and a competitor’s next offer.
How spa discounts can increase bookings while reducing revenue
Consider a deliberately simplified example.
These are illustrative figures, not a spa case study or sector averages. All amounts exclude VAT.
Assume the same package, with £70 of variable delivery costs per booking, every booking acquired through paid advertising, and acquisition cost rising from £15 to £20.
Monthly measure | Original position | Discount-led campaign |
Bookings | 100 | 120 |
Revenue per booking | £150 | £120 |
Total revenue | £15,000 | £14,400 |
Variable delivery costs | £7,000 | £8,400 |
Advertising spend | £1,500 | £2,400 |
Contribution after delivery costs and advertising | £6,500 | £3,600 |
The campaign delivers 20% more bookings. Advertising spend rises 60%. Revenue falls 4%. The money left after those delivery costs and advertising falls by almost 45%.
Rent, fixed salaries, maintenance, financing and the other overheads still need paying from that remainder. It is contribution, not net profit.
The team is serving more guests.
The diary looks healthier.
The business has less money left.
Even before the acquisition-cost increase, a 20% discount requires 25% more bookings simply to recover the original revenue. Those additional bookings then have to be delivered.
You cannot turn over a treatment room, wash a robe or provide a therapist’s time with an email open rate.
When does a spa promotion actually make commercial sense?
Of course, a targeted offer can make excellent sense. An otherwise empty appointment may generate worthwhile incremental contribution. A controlled introduction can attract a customer who becomes profitable over time.
A spa promotion earns its place when it generates additional contribution after delivery and acquisition costs, without displacing more valuable demand or damaging the experience.
Its longer-term value depends on what those customers do next.
The judgement depends on what would have happened without the offer. Did it create an additional booking, or discount one that would have happened anyway? Did it fill genuinely spare capacity, or displace a better-paying guest? Did that visitor return at a sustainable price?
“Bookings went up” answers none of those questions.
Weak spa brand positioning leaves price to do the selling
The deeper problem starts long before the campaign goes live.
Look at the language the sector keeps using: escape, unwind, restore, indulge.
Look at the imagery: blue water, folded towels, candlelight, eyes closed, robe, flute, repeat.
Those things help people recognise the category. They do very little to explain why one particular business deserves preference.
A pool is a facility. A robe is something you lend me. Prosecco is available in the supermarket.
The brand has to do more commercial work than arranging those objects attractively.
If you leave the meaningful differences unexplained, customers will use the differences they can understand.
Distance. Availability. Package inclusions. Price.
They are making a perfectly rational decision with the information you have given them.
Then the next promotion reinforces the lesson.
Your customer begins to suspect that the advertised price is negotiable, provided they wait for the right subject line.
That is how you can acquire a database full of people who recognise your discounts without building much attachment to your business.
Discount-led demand can put the spa experience under pressure
The consequences reach far beyond marketing.
European Spa’s reporting on the UK Spa Association’s 2025 survey, which had 108 respondents, recorded 35% with at least one unfilled vacancy. It also reported that 9% had cut staff or staff hours in response to National Insurance changes, while 25% had raised prices.
This is a respondent sample, not a census of every UK spa, but it describes an operating environment with little room for casual margin sacrifice.
Imagine adding a volume-driving promotion to a team already struggling to cover its rota.
More appointments create pressure on the time between treatments. Reception has more arrivals to handle. The relaxation space feels busier. A guest who bought tranquillity encounters a business trying to process demand.
That is a possible operating consequence, not an inevitable outcome of every offer. It is precisely why the people responsible for staffing and service delivery should be involved before marketing promises another wave of bookings.
Otherwise, the promotion can undermine the experience that was supposed to make the customer return.
Building spa pricing power starts in the boardroom
This is where I want the CEO involved.
Spa brand positioning means deciding who the business is for, why those guests should prefer it and what the experience will consistently prove.
Choosing what the business will be valued for is a leadership responsibility. Marketing can communicate it, but the rest of the organisation has to make it believable.
A spa built around deep quiet needs decisions about group bookings, capacity, sound, circulation and staff behaviour.
A spa built around sociable celebration will need a different environment and operating model.
Trying to promise both, to everyone, at all times creates compromises a beautiful website cannot conceal.
A stronger proposition might centre on a distinctive sense of place, a particular service philosophy, exceptional treatment expertise or a specific guest occasion. Whatever you choose must influence what actually happens when people arrive.
My background in theatre taught me how quickly the audience detects a scene that does not make sense. In an experience business, customers are surrounded by the evidence. The room, the welcome, the pace and the behaviour of the team either support the promise or unravel it.
At Q Branch, this is why we bring Brand, People and Operations into the same conversation through FUSION.
A positioning decision needs operational consequences. Staff need to understand what they are delivering, and leadership needs to resource it.
The spa performance measures that deserve boardroom attention
I would want the next spa board meeting to spend less time admiring campaign revenue and more time examining the quality of the business being created.
Five measures will tell you more than a celebratory screenshot of campaign revenue:
Realised revenue per completed visit: what the guest actually pays after discounts, excluding VAT and allowing for refunds.
Customer acquisition cost by channel: attributable acquisition spend divided by genuinely new customers. Keep existing-customer reactivation separate and state which costs are included.
Contribution per booking: realised revenue less variable delivery costs and the acquisition or distribution costs attributed to that booking, without counting the same cost twice.
Second-visit rate and value: the share of first-time guests who complete another visit within a defined period, and the price and contribution of that return visit.
Peak versus off-peak performance: whether offers fill spare capacity or replace bookings that could have sold at a sustainable full price.
Revenue-based return on ad spend does not deduct the cost of delivering the visit. A good-looking ROAS figure is a starting point for investigation, not a verdict on profitability.
Track those answers by offer and by customer group. A healthy overall average can conceal a promotional segment that requires constant subsidy.
And give full-price customers a reason to feel valued.
If the most attentive communication they receive is another discount they missed, the business is doing a peculiar job of rewarding their confidence.
Premium pricing has to be earned through an experience people understand, want and trust.
A new typeface will not do that. Neither will cancelling every promotion overnight while leaving the proposition unchanged.
The work starts with a decision about why this business deserves to be chosen, followed by the discipline to make that choice evident throughout the experience.
I am not asking spa leaders to stop selling. I am asking them to examine what their selling is teaching the market.
Every campaign can strengthen a reason to prefer you. It can also teach customers that another spa, another package and another discount will do just as well.
When attention costs more, you cannot afford to keep paying to make yourself interchangeable.
Before approving the next offer, remove the logo and the discount.
What remains that a customer would specifically miss if your business disappeared?
If the answer is “a pool, a robe and a glass of prosecco”, the next marketing meeting needs the CEO.
MATT
About Matt Clutterham
Matt Clutterham is a brand and experience strategist, former West End lighting designer and co-founder of Q Branch Consulting. He works with CEOs and leadership teams of experience-led businesses, including spas, hotels, hospitality and leisure operators. Q Branch’s FUSION approach aligns Brand, People and Operations around the experience the business promises and its ability to deliver it consistently.
If your spa’s strongest selling point has become its next discount, speak to Q Branch about the positioning and experience behind the offer.
Sources and evidence notes
Research checked 28 September 2026. Historical reporting periods are stated in the article. Advertising expenditure, ad prices, acquisition costs, visits, revenue growth and profit are distinct measures; these sources do not establish that discounting caused observed sector trends.
Advertising Association/WARC, refreshed UK advertising expenditure report, 30 April 2026. UK advertising investment; revised channel definitions. Not spa-specific spending.
Meta, Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results, 28 January 2026. Global average price per ad, not UK spa acquisition cost.
WordStream/LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2025. 16,446 US search campaigns, 1 April 2024–31 March 2025; reported averages are medians. Beauty and Personal Care is broader than spas.
Knight Frank, UK Hotel Trading Performance Review and Outlook, February 2026. 2025 hotel-segment performance. Total revenue and operating profit per available room include activities beyond spa.
ISPA, 2026 Big Five statistics. US spa industry, calendar 2025; research conducted by PwC.
Zenoti, The 2026 Beauty and Wellness Benchmark Report: Spa Edition, 29 April 2026. Aggregated North American platform-business data for calendar 2025. Membership spas derive at least 30% of revenue from memberships. A decline in the growth rate is not a decline in revenue.
European Spa, UK Spa Association summer gathering report, 4 August 2025. Trade-journal reporting of the UKSA State of the Industry survey; 108 respondents.
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