Making the gym work out for you

If your gym is unmanned, personal viewing screens offer a solution for promoting other services.

Derek Burke, Dubai-based sales director at premium fitness equipment supplier Precor, explains the revenue generating opportunities presented by secondary spend.

Crucial to the success of any hotel fitness facility is treating it as a separate profit centre, but maximising the revenue it generates can be a challenging task, especially in the current global economic downturn.

With all businesses in the Middle East striving to work more efficiently and maintain robust profit margins in a tough marketplace, developing secondary revenue streams can be key to a gym’s profitability.

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The theory is a simple one. Once you’ve attracted a customer to your business, utilising every opportunity to encourage them to spend more can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

What’s more, enticing customers to get more out of their visit — whether this be via a trip to the spa or restaurant, a personal training session or purchasing a supplement to increase muscle gain — offers them tangible benefits that will keep them coming back.

Shout about it
Increased yield from your customers, be they hotel guests or pre-paid members, can stem from a number of avenues. Don’t be afraid to shout about additional services and add-ons.

Living and working in the region, I know first-hand that a pool and gym are now de rigueur in Middle Eastern hotels, with even mid-market and budget chains realising they’re a modern market expectation.

And hotel guests accustomed to such facilities won’t be put off by cross-selling. In fact, they’ll expect nothing less than to be told about the complimentary services that complete your wellness offering and further enhance their experience.

Perhaps the most obvious and cost-effective link is with the hotel spa. The vast majority of Middle Eastern hotels now offer spa facilities and encouraging guests to follow their workout with a sports massage for example, will be a seamless step for them, yet it doesn’t incur additional spend on buying in stock or recruiting extra staff.

The same applies to promoting other areas of your business, such as the restaurant — ‘post-workout’ specials on the lunch menu or a range of freshly-made fruit juices and smoothies can be all it takes to lure your gym goers to spend money on food and beverage.

Personal training is another tried and tested revenue generator, which links intrinsically with your fitness offering.

Already well established in the UAE, one-on-one training sessions are an increasingly popular way for hoteliers to challenge and motivate guests and members.

From a revenue point of view, bespoke training programmes mean results, and results mean retention. And in a region where hotel gyms are very often unmanned, it also provides a point of contact between staff and customers, and so the opportunity to personally up-sell other profit centres.

Don’t be afraid to promote seemingly diverse areas of your business, as well. I recently saw a flyer in a Dubai hotel gym promoting the meeting and conference services. As a result, I mentioned it to my local events manager who went on to arrange a conference there. Simple, yet effective.