Today is the first day of a new decade! I hope that everyone has had a lovely and safe holidays thus far — with LOTS of delicious food (holidays are the best aren’t they?) The start of a new year tends to bring about change for a lot of people; here is what’s going to be the biggest one for myself and Precision Therapeutics over the coming months:
At the end of February I am moving from my centrally located apartment downtown and moving up to my new home on the north side of the city! It is roughly where 127 Street meets the Henday; AKA the great white north but close-ish towards the St. Albert side.
How this will impact my clients: in talking with my colleagues and friends (as well as just observing the massage business trends these last few years) it is obvious that the industry as a whole is raising their prices. Most people have gone from $85-90 for a 60 minute massage treatment up to $95-105 for the same length of time over these last couple of years.
The entire time that I’ve been a Massage Therapist I’ve charged $90 for a 60 minute treatment. I feel like this is an appropriate value for what I put in to each treatment as well as what people get in return. So I will NOT be raising my base treatment prices at this point in time (although to be fair, I do expect within the next two years that I will have to do just that; if only to stay competitive with other clinics or practitioners. But I will give plenty of notice when I plan to do so, rest assured).
However, I have been doing mobile massage work specifically for almost 3 years now, and have had the Evolve space for a year and a half. Yet there is no difference in treatment costs between the established clinic’s space or me driving a half an hour and bringing everything a treatment needs with me to a clients home instead. I’m not complaining at all – I love mobile work – I’m just pointing out that there is a lot more coordination that goes in to each mobile appointment as opposed to when someone comes to see me at Evolve for their treatment.
Why I will be adjusting my travel fees
Starting March 1st (2020) all clients may be subject to a travel fee for mobile work, based on how far I need to travel to get to them. The Edmonton city limits will no longer be a catch-all grace range area where if you are within the bounds of the city then you are guaranteed to not have a travel fee. I will instead be charging a $5 travel fee to those mobile clients whom I need to travel MORE THAN 14 KM’s to arrive at their homes. This is roughly 20 minutes of driving through the city or 12-15 minutes of Henday driving.
People over 30 KM’s away will be charged an additional $5 to a total of $10 instead. People looking for me to come to their homes who are beyond 40 KM’s away will have to contact me to make sure that I can coordinate enough time to travel out to that area and make it back for my next treatment in-time (most people that would fall into this category already do this, but I wanted to make this clear now for any new person to stumble upon this post right now).
In regards to back-to-back clients in the same household: they will still get a $5 per-person discount as a thank you for me not having to travel to multiple homes to work on the same amount of people. However they will still be charged a travel fee if that residence is more than 14 KM’s away for travel. The difference here though is that ONLY ONE person has the travel fee applied. Meaning that only one persons receipt will have both a $5 discount & a $5 extra charge for travel (simply cancelling each other out and just having a base $90 treatment) OR the fee could be split between the two or three people that I am working on in that one residence. I would leave it up to the people that I’d be working on, but everyone within that same household will all still get a $5 discount.
As much as the Henday makes it great time-wise to rip over to Beaumont. It would still be roughly 50 KM’s to get down there from my new home. The same can be said for an area such as Spruce Grove, which is geographically closer to where my new home will be versus my current one downtown, but is still taking around 30 KM’s / a chunk of time to get there. So this effectively is a step towards factoring in wear and tear on my vehicle, the rising gas prices, as well as the set-up and take-down time of the massage table, etc. without having to raise my base rates for all massages. Just the ones where extra effort and coordination goes into them.
I feel that adjusting my travel fees will provide a happy medium from what I’ve done the last few years, compared to where my business currently is now and where it will be in the next few months alone. If you have any questions about the changes coming in to effect on March 1st then please leave me a comment below or send me a message in any other way that you would like to contact me!
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