The Pros and Cons of Massage Services

Sometimes you just need to take a break. Besides helping members develop fit and healthy lifestyles, the University of Cincinnati Campus Recreation also provides services to help campus constituents relax. Massage services have been offered at the facility since it opened in 2006, but they recently decided to end the table massage services.

“We have since lent our focus to re-branding our Corporate Chair Massage services to serve our university, affiliates and surrounding community groups,” said Troy Baker, the coordinator of fitness and wellness programs.

While typically Campus Recreation might be associated with physical fitness, Baker said massage services is aligned with their mission. “Our Campus Recreation department’s mission is to create the best experience for every member we serve and we believe taking time to relax and take part in an activity that compliments the rest of one’s physically active regime is highly beneficial. Our Corporate Chair Massage service aligns with that mission by offering easily accessible and cost effective chair massage events.”

UC Campus Recreation offers Corporate Chair Massage events to students, faculty, staff, university organizations, affiliate organizations and community members. “We charge for these events, with a pay structure that becomes cheaper for the longer the event is held,” explained Baker. “We also provide free chair massages for some student-focused Campus Recreation events, including welcome weekend, wellness week, stress less fest, Campus Recreations 10^th Birthday Bash and more.”

According to Baker, Corporate Chair Massage is a great way to reward the department and show appreciation to staff and employees, but there are a few key factors to consider when offering massage services. “Unless you build your facility with a dedicated space in mind for massage, it’s a difficult service to sustain. One reason is that it’s difficult to adequately pay licensed massage therapists, stay within affordable pricing for students and have much profit margin remaining.”

Are you considering offering massage services within your Recreation Center? Baker breaks down a few of the pros and cons to consider.

Pros

• The Corporate Chair Massage services are scheduled easier than individual table massages.
• You can reach a large number of individuals in a short amount of time.
• Easy to travel for events — we can come to you or you can come to us.

Cons

• Massage therapists are contractors, which are a bit more difficult to manage than students who frequent our facility regularly. It’s harder to communicate with staff that only work a few hours per week.
• Maintaining laundry, purchasing linens and lotions that can only be used by our massage therapy program was an inefficient use of funds and very costly.
• We did not have an adequate space for massage with proper plumbing, nor did we have a quiet, relaxing space. Our massage room was sharing a space inside of our personal training suite, which was a very loud space.
• At the time, we were using software without optimal scheduling capabilities, which let to frequent, costly mistakes.