ISM SPA Reviews

They are very cheap. My spa needed support staff on weekends and corporate refused to pay for more than one person to work the desk, phones, walk ins, and overall guest services. This lead to many scheduling mistakes, unhappy clients, and high turn over. The professional staff is severely underpaid based on what they charge. While most spas pay an hourly, commission and gratuity- Ism only pays and hourly plus gratuity. With 10 years of experience in luxury spas, I took a huge pay cut to work for a known name in hospitality. But, don’t be fooled by the promises the managers make during your interview. They will tell you that you can make twice as much as you likely will. You will never get enough hours at most of the spas to qualify for medical. I personally resigned as a corporate trainer because I was encouraged to lie to new hires and I couldn’t do it. Huge Con- managers are rarely at the spa, and rely on an hourly employee to pick up the slack. They have the highest management turn over that I have ever seen in our industry.

I was under ISM Management for 2 years of my 13+ at my Spa. After the initial Training, we saw next to none. We had such an aggressive Budget that we really couldn't afford to take entire days off at a time to take employee's off the books from appointments. Management asked what needed to change in order to reach desired revenues and I told them ADVERTISING. We are hidden away on the 2nd floor and VERY few people know we are even there and if they do, they forget that we are. While they did slightly more than previous Owners, it wasn't near enough and we still had to fight Hotel Advertising Dept to get what we needed which they promised me they would speak on my behalf when things didn't get done. That didn't happen. I had 3 different bosses in the 2 years I was there. I think that speaks volumes. The one I had when I left is already gone as well and I've been gone a matter of months. I often felt bad for the HR Director and for my Boss because I knew that they were under a ridiculous amount of pressure to make waaay to many things happen for just one person. I knew this because that's what was happening to me. I was bombarded from all sides. Owners, my boss, Accounting, HR and Training Dept for countless projects, reports, etc. that they would come up with to "improve revenues". Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep up with my every day responsibilities. The "straw that broke the camel's back" was they had me out knocking on doors with gift bags trying to drum up business. Just one more thing piled on top of everything else. Meanwhile we had an entire Marketing & Advertising Department at our disposal that did absolutely NOTHING but foil any ideas and plans I tried to push thru to help out our revenue. RIDICULOUS. When I left, my Advertising Budget was like $70/month. What was I supposed to do with that?? And then I'm being told to get this project done, get this printed up to take out on sales calls and then being questioned as to why that money was spent. BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO!! Honestly it just got to the point where you just had to laugh. I was relieved when it was over but also extremely hurt that I'd poured my life blood into a place just to be kicked to the curb like I was nothing and none of it mattered. Companies tell you to think of your place of employment as your own business and that's what I did. I tried SO HARD. Blood sweat and tears and did any of it matter? Nope. Thanks for nothing. Oh and all the comments on here about the Fake caring? So true. The night before I was fired, the Owner had a dinner where I handed awards to my employees and she smiled and clapped and said, "what a great team". Spoke to my husband, enquired about our daughter. Next morning? Fired. ALSO, another point I forgot to mention. When we trained in the beginning, I trained for Front Desk. When we hired new LMT's no one really knew what they were doing on training. We were given a book and I had to assign an LMT who was getting paid no more than additional hours to train new LMT's.