Card-spend, hotel-spa and franchise data hint at a mild mid-year taper, giving gyms time to beef up retail margins and tighten labor costs
U.S. spas, often the canary in the discretionary-spend coal mine, logged modest sales gains in the first quarter, but fresh transaction data point to a budding slowdown that gym and studio owners can’t afford to ignore.
A new “Wellness Check-up” from Truist Securities, which analyzes card-spend, hotel-spa P&Ls and franchise filings, suggests consumers may start trimming wellness extras just as fitness businesses lean harder into recovery services and premium add-ons.
Key Indicators
Truist’s six-million-user card panel showed roughly 5 % year-on-year spending growth at day-spas and sauna chains in Q1, but April growth is running 200–300 basis points lower after calendar adjustments. Additional call outs from the report include the following:
- Retail outperforms services. At 700 full-service hotel spas, product sales — serums, balms, branded gear — rose 4.9%, outpacing treatment revenue by 3.7 points.
- Labor costs bite. Therapist and technician wages per occupied room climbed well ahead of revenue, squeezing margins.
- Franchise cadence steady but slow. Early 2025 FDDs for seven recovery-oriented chains show low-single-digit unit growth and similar royalty gains.
- 2024 finished strong. The International Spa Association counted 5.8% revenue growth across roughly 22,000 U.S. spas on a 3.1% rise in visits.
Preview for Fitness & Wellness?
Retail’s faster clip confirms that members happily pay for feel-good add-ons such as infrared sessions, compression sleeves and collagen chews when discretionary budgets tighten elsewhere. Early softness argues for tiered memberships and à-la-carte recovery packs, but Q1’s baseline shows premium wellness still carries resilience if the value is clear. Truist analysts warn that consumer sentiment could erode in the back half, however.
Spas act as an advance read on discretionary health spending, and their April wobble suggests fitness operators should shore up strategy before economic turbulence worsens. If spas are feeling a chill, gyms that emulate their recovery-as-retail model — but pair it with community, accountability and data-driven programming — may be well positioned.
