spa leaders
Top Team
Marriott International The Spa Global Leadership Team at Marriott International talk to Katie Barnes about the group’s two new global spa concepts, how they work together to run one of the biggest hotel spa divisions in the world and what else we can expect from them in the future John Hopp senior director of global spa development What’s your main role? I work on behalf of Marriott’s hotel brands to provide spa concepts that support their long-term vision of the brand experience. My major focus is to manage the creative spa concepting processes and monitor the progress of all our spa brands.
What we’ve created will provide systems, training and support like never seen in the industry before
allowed the JW Marriott brand to squarely position itself in the wellbeing category.
How do you work with other members of the Spa Global Leadership team? Kenneth Ryan (see p40) and I support them by designing enhancement programmes and training to elevate either revenue, service standards or both. Much of my time is dedicated to overseeing quality, audits and standards.
l Spa concepts are key to getting hotel owners on board says Hopp
What’s exciting about the new Ritz-Carlton Spa concept? It will provide systems, training and support never seen in the industry before. Spa has
always been a hallmark of the Ritz-Carlton portfolio, so working to elevate the offering in a group that’s already very successful has been an interesting and unique challenge.
l Hopp will assist in the rollout of the new Ritz-Carlton Spas in 2016 50 spabusiness.com issue 1 2016
©cybertrek 2016
What impact will it have on your role? A significant one. We’ll be undergoing an 18-month conversion of all existing Ritz-Carlton spas and I expect much of my time in 2016 will be dedicated to supporting each property as we roll out. Spa by JW was Marriott’s first global spa brand. What made it so significant? It was our first complete spa concept, meaning there are multiple treatment, service and design elements that cannot be left out of the concept (see p44). It was significant because we started from scratch without any preconceived ideas about what our customer wanted. It’s also
What’s the key to spa development? I still believe it’s getting the hotel owners on board. When we’re able to share our ideas, concepts and proposals, owners are able to see our connection to the overarching parent brand and are less likely to scale back the spa project or look at outside operators for solutions. What’s new for 2016? Part of my role at HQ is to enable communication for our global spa community through our internal websites and in 2016 we’ll be adding a compendium of guidance tools. We’ll provide examples of different scenarios and solutions that can be applied to a spa strategy, as well as tools to help enhance revenue streams and self-guided management tools to enhance associate satisfaction. The other part of my role will be to support the tremendous growth of our spa discipline.