Cut Spa No-Shows With Deposits and Reminders Customers Can Answer
A no-show on a 90-minute massage leaves a therapist and a room idle for the whole slot, too late to resell. This page covers the three parts that reduce no-shows: a deposit at booking, a reminder sent early enough to act on, and an easy way to reply and move the appointment. AeroChat handles the replies. Part of the spa and wellness workflows.
What happens today
Some spas send a reminder the day before, by hand or from a booking system, and many send none. The customer reads it, realises they cannot make it, and means to call. The desk is busy, or it is 9pm, so they do nothing. The room sits empty at 3pm the next day. Other customers simply forget, because the reminder came from a number they do not recognise and they could not reply to it.
A reminder the customer cannot answer still leaves them having to call you to change anything.
The flow that works
- Deposit at booking. The booking recipe takes a deposit before confirming. A customer who has paid to hold the slot is more likely to turn up, or to tell you when they cannot.
- A reminder 24 to 48 hours ahead, while the customer can still change plans, sent from your WhatsApp number. It names the treatment and time, and asks the customer to reply if they need to change.
- A reply that does the work. When the customer writes “I can’t make it. Can I move to Sunday?”, AeroChat finds the booking in your calendar, checks your policy, offers new times and moves it. “See you tomorrow” gets a short thank-you and the address.
The slot is freed a day early instead of sitting empty on the day.
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
When a customer replies about an upcoming appointment, for example to confirm, to say they cannot come, or to ask to change the time, follow these steps.
- Find their booking in our bookings Sheet and the therapist’s Google Calendar using their phone number. If they have more than one upcoming booking, ask which one.
- If they are confirming, thank them and send our address and a reminder to arrive 10 minutes early.
- If they want to move it, work out how many hours are left before the appointment. Example policy: 24 hours or more, the move is free and the deposit carries over. Less than 24 hours, tell them the deposit is kept under our policy and that they can still book a new time.
- Offer up to three new times when the same therapist and a room are free, closest to what they ask for. When they choose, move the booking in both calendars, update the row in the bookings Sheet and send the new confirmation.
- If they want to cancel, apply the same policy, remove the booking from the calendars, mark the row in the bookings Sheet as cancelled and tell them clearly what happens to the deposit.
- If they ask for an exception to the policy, for example because they are unwell, do not decide. Tell them the manager will reply today and hand the conversation over with the booking details.
Never waive a deposit or a fee yourself. Never promise a refund. Only tell the customer what our policy says.
Change the 24-hour window and the deposit rule to your own policy before you paste it.
What to connect
- Google Calendar and your bookings Sheet, through the same Google connection as the booking recipe, with permission to find, move and cancel bookings.
- Spa and salon booking software, if your spa runs on it. A solo therapist or a small studio can run on Google Calendar. Larger spas usually book through spa and salon software instead. Zenoti, Phorest and Mindbody each publish an API for appointments, so AeroChat can check availability and make, move or cancel bookings there in place of Google Calendar. Describe your system in the recipe and paste in its API key.
- Your cancellation policy, uploaded to the knowledge base, word for word.
- The reminder itself. AeroChat replies to customers inside a conversation. It does not schedule a reminder for each appointment by itself. Send reminders as a WhatsApp broadcast from AeroChat, using an approved WhatsApp template. For example, each afternoon your desk filters the bookings Sheet for tomorrow’s customers and schedules the broadcast to them. Their replies land in AeroChat and this recipe handles them. Broadcasts are included from the Growth plan.
- A booking system, if you use one. If it sends reminders and lets you edit the text, end the reminder with your WhatsApp link, for example wa.me/15551234567 (example number), so replies come to AeroChat.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What you still decide
- How many hours before the appointment a change is free.
- Whether a late change loses the deposit or moves it.
- Who handles exceptions, and how quickly.
- When reminders go out, and who on your team schedules them.
One cost to weigh: Meta charges per message for WhatsApp template messages such as reminders (Meta WhatsApp pricing). One reminder per appointment, sent early, usually does more than three sent close to the time.
The result to expect
The strongest independent evidence on reminders comes from healthcare trials. A text reminder raised attendance by more than ten percentage points.
| Cochrane review, text reminders for appointments | Figure |
|---|---|
| Attendance with no reminder | 67.8% |
| Attendance with a text message reminder | 78.6% |
| Evidence base | 8 randomised trials, 6,615 participants |
Source: Gurol-Urganci et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013. Healthcare appointments.
There is no equivalent independent study for spas, and none we have found on deposits. Expect the same direction: the deposit gives the customer a reason to keep the slot, and a reminder they can answer turns a would-be no-show into a moved booking. Measure your own no-show rate for a month before and after you start.
Next: rescheduling and cancellation, which handles change requests that do not start from a reminder.
Turn reminders into moved bookings
Paste the recipe, schedule a test reminder broadcast to your own number, and reply asking to move the time.
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On Shopify? Install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store.