Thoughts on facilitating couples floats – DSP 85

First off, we’ll just say that Float On does not offer couples floats and never has. Graham and Ashkahn dive into their reasoning for that decision while simultaneously addressing some of the common concerns and benefits that go along with the practice. Some people say it helps get people into the tanks that wouldn’t try it otherwise. Some smaller centers rely on the added revenue per tank and increased exposure to the practice. It’s a complicated question and one that each center will likely have to consider on their own.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Ashkahn: And today’s question is, “do you offer couple’s floats? Why or why not?” Good question.

Graham: Yeah, so we don’t offer couple’s floats. We don’t offer them here.

Ashkahn: And we never have. I guess everything we say from now on should be taken in that context.

Graham: But, I’ve personally done couple’s floats. I have gone on couple’s floats myself.

Ashkahn: And enjoyed them.

Graham: Yeah, so it’s not like we’re these anti-couple’s floats kind of people out here, just bashing on couple’s floats or something.

Ashkahn: Why not? So, why don’t we offer couple’s floats? There’s a couple reasons. See what I did there?

Graham: Okay, what are they?

Ashkahn: So, here’s my biggest one and it’s interesting because it’s also, what I hear is, the biggest reason to do couple’s floats. We’re kind of float purists and we like to get people into that kind of float experience pretty hardcore, right away, on your first float.

Graham: Yeah, so we don’t let people, for instance … well, we let them if they really want to, but we encourage them very strongly to not play any music in the float tanks and we don’t even do music leading into the float, only coming out of the float.

Ashkahn: We really suggest turning the lights off. We’re not like, “Hey, maybe you should leave your lights on for the first float.” Or anything like that, we’re really encouraging people to go into that.

Graham: Yeah, full float experience.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so again, keep that context in mind for the rest of this. But, part of it is I really don’t want people to choose going into a float tank, for a couple’s float with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, because they’re nervous of doing the normal float by themselves. Or, the other reason is, because it’s cheaper, right? We can tackle that one in a second. But the first one, like I really just don’t want people to use this as a crutch. To be like, “Oh, you know I want to go float, but I’m feeling kind of nervous, maybe this couple’s float thing sounds a little less intimidating.”

Graham: Or “I want to go float, but it sounds too expensive. I can save some money by getting my girlfriend”

Ashkahn: And so, because those people, I think a lot of times were they to not have that crutch they’d probably still come in and float and they’d probably go in there and have a really nice float experience. We don’t have a lot of people coming out and being like, “I just couldn’t handle that.” Or anything like that. So, I kind of like giving that extra push, not having those things where they could fall back and go away from that kind of full on float experience available in our center. And the thing you hear about the benefits of couple’s floats is basically, exactly that. Like people say-

Graham: “It’s a really nice introduction it.”

Ashkahn: People who are too nervous, who maybe wouldn’t even come try floating in the first place feel a lot more comfortable coming in with their boyfriend or girlfriend-

Graham: People who want to save money on it actually get a chance to come in. So the same things to us are downsides are highly positive for people running couple’s floats.

Ashkahn: Right, this is basically a way to ease someone in, who would then become a regular customer, who would’ve never floated at all had you not had that kind of easing in, sort of process.

Graham: So, I think the biggest thing that comes up, which is probably one of the reasons that we haven’t done it as well, is this concern about sanitation now that you have a second person in the float tank. By that, I mean, so there’s a couple ideas there; One is sanitation in the sense of cross contamination between people, like you’d have in a hot tub or something like that and in a lot of float tanks, their disinfection systems are running in between people, as opposed to during the actual session. But, I think that argument is really easily countered by the fact that you’re getting naked and going in there with someone else voluntarily. Like, the chances that you’re already cross contaminated in some way or that the float tank is really the least of your concerns, is pretty high.

Ashkahn: Right, like the person that you would be in the float tank with is probably someone who you’ve had more intimate interactions with, than being in this float tank.

Graham: Yeah and so that’s like the Health Department concern, like that’s if you bring this up to a Health Department about couple’s floats, that’s what they’ll bring up. And I think a really good argument is, we’re not forcing people to get in there with strangers, it’s someone they know and someone, again, who they’re probably very intimate with.

Ashkahn: I mean, just to kind of drill home the logic here a little bit, like the reason that’s a question is because, when you talk to Health Departments, most float tanks are built with this logic of, I’m filtering between people. So, a person gets out, float tank gets filtered, new person gets in and you’re kind of riding on that logic for a lot of the way that you operate. So once you change that logic, it brings up a set of questions that you didn’t have to answer previous to that. So, that’s kind of where Health Departments are coming from when they’re looking at something like that.

Graham: And then there’s the other one of, “what if there’s hanky panky in the float tanks?”

Ashkahn: Hanky panky in the tanky, yeah that’s how I’ve heard it from other float centers.

Graham: And same thing for just in the room in general or in the shower. We’re basically just hairless monkeys … “they’ll go wild if you put them alone in a float tank room, people will go crazy!” It’s definitely a concern, and again, I think that’s one of the reasons at Float On, we’ve decided not to do it as much. Not so much for our concern of that, but because that’s a question that comes up from so many customers asking us like, “Hey, how do you make sure people aren’t doing anything like weird in there or something?” You know? And we’re just like, “Oh, it’s one person in a room at a time.” And that just settles that conversation so quickly.

Ashkahn: Yeah they don’t even ask without. It’s only once you talk about couple’s floats that I think that idea pops into people’s minds.

Graham: Sure, yeah so it just kind of avoids that conversation with people about well, everything’s sanitary anyway, we don’t really think people are doing that. There’s not a ton of time during transitions and I don’t know, you get to know all these weird kind of nebulous conversations that aren’t as fun to answer necessarily.

Ashkahn: So, I mean all that being said, when I’ve done it personally it’s a nice experience and I wouldn’t describe it the same as being in the float tank by myself, like it definitely felt like a different type of experience. And personally it’s not something that I’d want to do every single time, as opposed to floating by myself. I think I definitely prefer floating with myself above anything else, but I understand the merit of offering it and I understand that it can be enjoyable.

Graham: Yeah, for sure and same over here. I’ve had some really good experiences doing couple’s floats and it is more common in certain areas, Europe definitely couple’s floats is a lot more common over there, then it is over here in the US or Canada.

Ashkahn: It’s a good success, it is what we hear from them. That’s what they say is that the couple’s floats has been a big help to their businesses.

Graham: Yeah and oftentimes the bulk of why they are able … so, for couple’s floats it saves the people going in money, but it also makes you more money, per tank session. And so, for two tank centers, three tank centers over there in Europe we’ve definitely heard that being able to get pretty much twice as many sessions in, theoretically, has been the difference between them succeeding verses having to go under.

Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting. You make a lot more revenue out of the same float tank, which is very appealing in the sense of your books. But, I don’t know to me that’s one of the things like if we were to ever offer it, I wouldn’t even want to offer a discount, I want it to be twice as expensive or maybe like more than twice as expensive-

Graham: More than twice as expensive really gets into uncomfortable ground there. Like that actually feels like we’re doing floats with a happy ending or something, “trust me it’s worth it.”

Ashkahn: I really don’t want people to make that decision purely because they’re going to save a few bucks, you know what I mean?

Graham: Right, so maybe the same amount, like instead of doing one float for $70 and a couple’s float for $100 or something, you’re doing a couple’s float for $140. It’s just as though you’d gotten two separate float tanks.

Ashkahn: Yeah, which sounds really unreasonable from a customer’s point of view I think, like “what the hell?” But, yeah I don’t know, that to me is I just really, it’s just a hard question to answer.

Graham: So, sorry for such a meandering answer again. So, that was our highly biased opinion on couple’s floating and keep sending the hard balls our way. Go to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast and shoot us over your questions.

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