pulse points
By russell donaldson
the great recession:
The Spa Industry’s “Ten-Year Challenge”
last month, we looked back at the very first iSPa
u.S. Spa industry Study from 1999 and saw how much the
industry has grown in the two following decades. Baseball
icon Joe Torre once said, “unless you have bad times, you
can’t appreciate the good times.” it’s a saying that holds
true for many spa professionals, with the industry’s rise in
recent times seeing it vanquish one hurdle bigger than the
16
PULSE
■
APriL 2019
others—the Great recession of the late 2000s.
The spa industry has long been recognized as a useful
barometer for the wider american economy: when the
overall economy is doing well, people tend to have more to
spend on leisure, so spas are an obvious beneficiary. it’s no
surprise then that as the u.S. economy became more
prosperous in the early years of the 21st century, the spa