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CEBU CITY, Philippines – Spa owners need to focus on medical spa (medspa) treatments.
This was the advice of Catherine Turvill, president of the Spa Association of the Philippines, to spa owners during the recent Beauty, Health and Wellness Show 2008 in Cebu City.
Turvill, who is also the president of the Spa Professionals International Development Center, encouraged players in the industry to focus on medspa treatments aside from beauty treatments.
A medical spa is a hybrid between a medical clinic and a day spa.
She said that it was better to adopt the new trends in the business to make it viable.
She urged the spa owners to educate the clients of the new trends and so they willingly embrace integrative medicine, which could be achieved by having a balanced lifestyle.
Some of the medical spa services in the Philippines particularly in Cebu are acupuncture, acupressure and lassotherapy or water therapy.
Health care is the latest trend in the spa industry, one of the topics Turvill discussed during the BHW show seminar recently.
In the United States, about 16 percent of the gross domestic product will be spent on healthcare by the year 2010. The US also reported a 133 percent growth in the medical spa industry, the highest in the spa subsectors.
The medspas started to emerge in the US five years ago. The physicians started recognizing the demand for effective and new healthcare approaches.
The medical practitioners saw that life, beauty and health enhancement products and services delivered in medically supported environments have gained credibility in the eyes of the consumer, an innovative approach to traditional healthcare delivery.
Most medical spas today are predominately focused on the delivery of graded beauty enhancement services.
A US medical spa industry report found a growing demand for a “stress-free” treatment environment as well as access to more non-invasive healthcare alternatives and advanced technology such as laser and other anti-aging solutions indicates steady triple figure annual growth for medical spas within the next 10 years.
The estimated annual revenues for the medspa sector would reach $350 million and would post an annual growth rate of 11 to 14 percent.
Turvill quoted writer Pilzer as having predicted in his book "The Wellness Revolution" that the spa industry would become a trillion dollar industry in the next decade.
What services are fueling such high revenues? Here in the Philippines, particularly in Cebu, some of these services are acupuncture, acupressure and lassotherapy or the water therapy.
The lassotherapy is the best service spa owners could render to their clients if they will put up their business in the north area of Cebu, since it is near beaches.
Microdermabrasion, chemical peels and emerging skin rejuvenation treatments are also rising.
In 2003, statistics showed that in the global spa industry, over 16 million treatments were performed, accounting for almost $3.3 billion in fees to practitioners. Equipment manufacturers and suppliers earned about $108 million.
By 2008, this will grow to more than 41 million procedures earning over $6 billion for practitioners and $185 million for manufacturers.
