How To Run A Successful Spa Business In The Sims 4

Simmers can enjoy the tranquil peace of yoga, massages, manicures, and pedicures with The Sims 4: Spa Day, and with the launch of The Sims 4: Businesses & Hobbies, they’re also now able to buy and run a spa themselves. Are you ready to run the beauty spa of your dreams?

Cross-pack integration means that your Sims can run every aspect of a spa, either from the comfort of their own home or on a bespoke lot. Here’s everything you need to know about opening and running a spa.

How To Set Up Your Sim’s Spa

You can run a spa from your Sim’s home or a community lot. If you have Simoleons to burn (Or are happy to cheat), it’s probably easiest to open your Spa on a community lot, thanks to the prebuilt lots Maxis added to the library/gallery.

You have to own both Businesses & Hobbies and the Spa Day game pack to be able to run a spa as a small business.

How To Buy A Spa

Firstly, head into ‘Manage Worlds’ and choose which World you want to open your Sim’s spa in. Then, open your library or the gallery. Filter it to show only Maxis content. You can also set the filter to only show lots with the spa lot type.

You have three pre-built spas to choose from:

Since these spas are all quite expensive, you could always consider buying a starter home and converting it into a spa by adding the right items. Or, you could dedicate an area of your Sim’s home to their business.

Place your chosen spa on an empty lot and confirm. Head back into Live Mode with whichever household you want to run your spa from and select a computer or phone. Then, use the Buy Small Business Venue Lot interaction.

If you’re using a computer, this interaction is tucked away under the Small Business menu. On the phone, it’s on the Business menu in general, as shown by the golden briefcase icon.

Find and select the spa you placed earlier and purchase it. Make sure you buy it furnished and tick the box underneath the lot preview to automatically register the business. This will help you later with applying the correct business settings.

How To Run A Spa From Home

Sims can save money by running a spa from home instead. To do so, you need to follow the steps you usually would to start a home business, then buy the correct items and maybe hire some Sims.

To start a home business, you can skip the property-buying steps and cut straight to registering your business. You can register your business by doing the following:

1. Select your Sim’s phone.
2. Navigate to the business section.
3. Use the ‘Register Small Business’ interaction.
4. Add any details about your new business, such as Business Activities and a name.

This is a much cheaper way of opening a spa than the other method, but you’ll still have to have 750 Simoleons to register your business. You’ll also have to make sure you have savings ready to buy any gear you might want, like massage tables or yoga mats.

How To Choose Business Activities For A Spa

The next stage to setting up your new business is all in the details. You’ll need to be ready to:

• Select your business activities.
• Decide who your target customers are.
• Brand your business.

If you bought a community lot with the spa type applied then a lot of the heavy lifting will have been done for you here. But, don’t worry if you didn’t – you can still easily customise everything manually.

Open the ‘Owned Businesses Panel’ in Live Mode while playing as the Sim who registered the business. Then, head to the ‘Manage Businesses’ menu. This will give you an overview of your business.

A spa with automatic registration will have the spa preset applied. This means that it’ll be named ‘Spa’, be given a serene leafy logo, and have the ‘Do Spa Activities’ business activity applied. Do Spa Activities include using:

• Bathtubs
• Massage chairs and tables
• Meditation stools (including the cushion)
• Yoga mats
• Saunas/Steam rooms

So, if you’re customising your business manually, this is a must-have business activity for your spa. You can add it by selecting one of the plus icons in the business activities section or you can select the Spa preset from the drop-down menu above it.

There are some other activities that can fit right in too, depending on what DLC you have:

• Drink Tea
• Use Hot Tubs
• Bathe and Shower
• Do Yoga
• Meditate

The name’s a little misleading, but Use Hot Tubs also covers Sims using hot spring items. Just be sure to add some showers and lockers so they can follow proper etiquette, or else the onsen will get murky.

Some of these activities, like Do Yoga and Meditate, are already covered by the Do Spa Activities option, so you don’t have to add them again. However, if you feel like fine-tuning which spa activities they do, then they give you the option.

How To Hire Staff For Your Spa

Although it’s entirely possible for a single Sim to run a spa, they’d have a hard time doing so. Especially if you decide to have a lot of different facilities available that need to be tended. Items like the massage tables and chairs, for example, need to have a Sim running them for them to be functional.

Re-open the ‘Owned Businesses’ panel and select ‘Manage Employee Tasks’. This will show the Sim who owns the business plus a further three empty slots. Select the empty slots to hire some new employees.

Now that you have some employees, you can pick what tasks they have at work. Select the plus icon and navigate to ‘Do Massages’ so they tend a table or chair in your spa.

Make sure you also have staff ready to handle any other business activities you might have. For example, if you choose Bathe and Shower, you’ll need an employee with the Clean task to keep on top of any grimy plumbing.

Your employees will show up for their shifts the next time you open your spa. Also, there are options in the ‘Owned Businesses’ panel that will let you decide roughly how much you pay them per hour and what their uniform looks like.

There doesn’t currently seem to be a task that would specifically get an employee to lead yoga classes at the moment.

This might be something for your own Sim to handle, or you could hire a yoga instructor by clicking on a mat.

Tips For Running A Successful Spa

With your spa up and running, you can move on to worrying about making it good and earning your first few Simoleons. You can do this by hiring skilled staff, picking out some good items, and giving your business model some thought.

Approach Customers Directly

When a customer arrives, select them as though you were going to introduce yourself to them. Then, if you have the right equipment available at your spa, you should be able to offer them a service directly.

This interaction is useful because customers can take a while to spend Simoleons sometimes, whereas this will speed the process up. Doing this will also make it clear exactly how much you’re going to earn from offering a service.

They might say no at the time, but this doesn’t mean they won’t spend money later anyway.

Choose Staff With A High Wellness Skill

It’s best to try and hire the most skilled Sims you can. This can be challenging, considering that your Sim can only hire Sims they’ve met before, and there aren’t premade Sims with the Wellness skill.

A decent workaround for this is visiting a spa community lot that your Sim doesn’t own and socialising with the staff. Then, you can snipe them for your own business by hiring them. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about no-compete clauses in The Sims 4.

Customers who are happy with the services they receive give tips.

Another way is by interacting with spa equipment and hiring staff. At first, they’ll effectively be there as a freelancer, offering their services to any of your clients. Introduce yourself to them and then they’ll show up as a new potential staff member.

Decorate And Furnish Your Spa Well

Try to furnish your spa as well as your Sims can afford to with fancy baths, massage tables, and yoga equipment. The better the range of items your customers have available, the more satisfied they’ll be with their visit. Plus, it gives more chances for them to part with their Simoleons.

The corner jet baths add an element of luxury that could fit right in at a spa. There’s one with the base game, plus a couple that come with Fitness Stuff and Get Famous.

You also might want to try buying some other items for your spa that are less directly related to encourage them to spend money. Customers will buy food from vendors, or you could set up a mini gift shop with luxurious face masks, crystals, and candles.

Mood-boosting items are also an underrated way of managing your business. Placing and lighting incense influences your customers’ emotions, or you could place crystals around the property for a similar effect.

Ticket kiosks are another new function added with Business & Hobbies that can bolster your income. You can add them from Buy Mode, and then you can set prices from the Manage Business menu.

You can charge customers one flat rate to enter your spa, or you can charge them for each hour they spend there. This can be a useful way of getting some extra money out of your customers to help cover those overhead fees like your staff’s salaries and other outgoings.

Charging a Sim for entry will make them spend less when they interact with other items around the business since it was effectively already covered by their entrance fee.

Play around with how much you charge if you use this method to maximise your income as much as possible.