We sent mystery shoppers to 66 sunbed outlets in 12 centres. The outlets included solaria (specialist sunbed establishments), fitness centres, hairdressers, beauty therapists and nail salons. One shopper went to all the selected outlets in each centre.

The shopper booked a session, told the operator it was their first sunbed, and evaluated the session against some of the guidelines in the standard. Our shoppers did not use the sunbeds – they completed the evaluation in the privacy of their cubicle.

What we found

Only 12 out of 66 operators met all our requirements. These were

  • The Electric Beach & Hair Studio (Whangarei)
  • Nails on Richmond (Auckland)
  • Sunworld Professional Tanning Studio (Auckland)
  • Pure Essentials (Hamilton)
  • Team 7 Hairdressing (Hamilton)
  • Beauty Rituals (Hawke’s Bay)
  • Beauty Secrets Day Spa & Beauty Clinic (Hawke’s Bay)
  • Studio 31 (Palmerston North)
  • Trois on Allen (Wellington)
  • Accent on Nouveau (Christchurch)
  • Carlton Hair Corp (Christchurch)
  • Shoreline Fitness Centre (Christchurch).

Name and shame
Peppers Hair & Beauty Boutique in Hawke’s Bay didn’t do anything right – even the goggles they provided were broken.

See Survey results for the full list of outlets surveyed.

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