XpresSpa Pivots To Coronavirus Testing At New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport
by Kevin Rozario
The largest operator of health and wellness spa retail services at U.S. airports has repurposed its currently shuttered business to screen and test for Covid-19, beginning with John F. Kennedy Airport “within a few weeks.”
XpresSpa Group, whose sales were $48.5 million last year, has signed a contract with JFK International Air Terminal LLC—the private operator of Terminal 4— to provide diagnostic tests for Covid-19, initially to airport and airline staff.
The pilot concept paves the way for the company to enter the medical sphere and widen its reach within the health and wellness segment in which it has been a player for 15 years.
Doug Satzman, CEO of XpresSpa Group since February 2019, tells me: “Initially we thought this might be a short-term project—perhaps six months or so to help alleviate the crisis. But we now believe it will evolve into a separate line of business.”
The decision to reposition came in early March when only half of the company’s portfolio of 51 airport locations was still open and “sales were falling by the day” recalls Satzman, who built his retail expertise through a 14-year career with Starbucks. By March 24, thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak, all of the company’s global spas were closed. “Our board chairman Bruce Bernstein came up with the idea to repurpose our real estate temporarily as Covid-19 testing centers. It was a way to keep our spaces active during this time,” says Satzman.
In Terminal 4, a modular facility has been developed pre-security with nine separate rooms that can administer over 500 tests per day. They will be a combination of nasal swabs and blood antibody tests for off-premise analysis. Future airport test spaces could be located within existing XpresSpa retail areas, which are mostly airside, or in a pre-security area like the pilot. In total, XpresSpa has 46 locations at 23 airports in the U.S. to choose from.
Commenting on the first test site Satzman says: “We are hopeful that this will serve as a model in other U.S. airports. As businesses start returning, airline and airport workforces will be critical to getting aviation back into play safely. We are positioning ourselves to support that.”
The Nasdaq-listed health and wellness company says it is working with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—which runs John F. Kennedy Airport as well as Newark and LaGuardia—to expand testing sites. Once confirmed, they could roll out this summer.
Since mid-March XpresSpa had been in discussions with various government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about plans to turn its other U.S. airport locations into COVID-19 testing facilities.
The company has the advantage of being in all the biggest U.S. hub airports which are also key point-of-entry cities. They include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and Washington. XpresSpa’s employees are already TSA security approved so they can be trained and deployed quickly.
A new brand and subsidiary for Covid-19 testing
XpresSpa has created a new brand, XpresCheck, for its Covid-19 screenings, which will be offered to airline employees, contractors and workers, airport concessionaires and their staff, TSA officers, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
XpresCheck is part of a specially-created subsidiary called XpresTest. In April, the company appointed Lewis Lipsey MD as chief medical director of XpresTest to help design Covid-19 protocols, as well as to train employees on testing procedures. Dr. Lipsey is also an attending physician at several hospitals in New York City, including The Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and Lenox Hill.
Last year, XpresSpa Group held 60% of the U.S. airport spa services market, making it more than three times bigger than its nearest rival, Be Relax. The company’s 51 locations in 25 airports globally include three in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, and two in Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates.