The three names in the category are sold as one thing and do three different jobs. A spa online booking system is the page a client books from; spa reservation software is the deposit, the cancellation window and the room hold behind it; spa appointment software is what the front desk works every morning, the reminders and the list of who is due back. This page separates them so a small spa buys the one it is short of and not all three, and it prices the choice against the published rates. The free reminder template on this site gives you the reminder count from your own diary first.
The spa online booking system is the front door
A client who cannot book at eleven at night from a phone books somewhere else, so the online booking page is not optional. But it is also the part of the stack that every vendor does adequately, and the one that changes the least about your revenue. Acuity Scheduling publishes Starter at $20 a month for one calendar and Standard at $34 for up to six, and at that price the booking page is a solved problem. Judge a spa online booking system on whether it writes into the same diary the desk uses, because a second diary is where double bookings are born.
Spa reservation software is the deposit and the window
The reservation layer is where a spa protects itself from the empty room. It holds the card or the deposit, states the cancellation window, and releases the room when the window closes. Dantas et al. 2018 found lead time and prior no-show history to be the two main determinants of a no-show across 105 studies, and a spa's lead times are long, so the reservation terms do real work. Whatever product you choose, the terms have to be visible on the booking page and repeated in the reminder, or they cannot be enforced without an argument at the desk.
Spa appointment software is the morning job
The front desk opens the day with two lists: who is booked today and needs a reminder or a confirmation chase, and who is overdue for their next visit and has no booking. That second list is the recall list, and it is the part most spas never see because their booking system only shows the calendar. Kheirkhah et al. 2016 put the average cost of a missed appointment at $196 in the clinics they studied, and the recall list is how a spa replaces that revenue. Recallvia Pro is $20 a month to keep the recall list, send the reminders at your lead time and record the confirmations, alongside whatever booking page you already run.
Questions people ask about spa online booking system
Do I need all three: a spa online booking system, spa reservation software and spa appointment software?
Most small spas need a booking page and a reminder system, and take the deposit through the booking page's card hold. Buy the reservation layer separately only if you take large deposits for packages or groups.
Should the deposit be mentioned in the reminder?
Yes, once, plainly. The reminder is the last moment the client can move the booking inside the window, and a reminder that restates the window and the deposit turns a no-show into a rebooking more often than one that only says the time.
How much does the reminder change attendance?
The Cochrane 2013 review found mobile text reminders raised attendance from about 67.8% to 78.6%, risk ratio 1.14, across seven studies. That is the difference between a room used four days in five and a room used nearly every day.
Will Recallvia take online bookings?
No. It works the diary you already have: the recall list, the reminders and the confirmation record. The booking page stays where it is.
Sources
- Acuity Scheduling, pricing
- Dantas et al., No-shows in appointment scheduling, a systematic literature review, Health Policy 2018
- Kheirkhah et al., Prevalence, predictors and economic consequences of no-shows, BMC Health Services Research 2016
- Gurol-Urganci et al., Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2013