Make your gym work out for you

Making money from a hotel health club presents a challenging task. Here, the region’s key fitness equipment suppliers provide their top tips to help ensure your gym is fit for business.

AL KAMDA

The major issue where hotel fitness facilities are concerned is to ensure they are in-line with the standards maintained across the rest of the hotel, according to Al Kamda SVP —business development Andy Dick.

“I find it very hard to understand why hotel GMs treat a gym differently to other areas of the hotel. Would someone book into a room or use a restaurant if the decor was tatty, the furniture old and broken, or the choice of menu poor? Why is it still a challenge to get management to realise that gym and spa is crucial in customers making choices about where to stay?” says Dick.

Firstly, the gym must be integrated within the rest of the hotel, he says. “Show images of the gym and associated facilities such as the spa on all hotel brochures, flyers and websites. Have in-room promotions to encourage guests to book an appointment with the gym or spa, link the restaurants’ menu for healthy options with the gym and vice versa. Ensure all front of house staff do an induction in the gym so they understand the service,” says Dick.

Selecting equipment for the target clientele is also important. “There is always a core of equipment that is required for all groups, such as standard CV products like treadmills, ellipticals, bikes and rowers and strength and toning stations for the major muscle groups. However, we can select specific machines that ladies feel are important. The main reason that women exercise is for weight management and toning so popular machines are for inner/outer thigh, gluteals, abdominals, posture exercises, stretching and core stability. Power Plate has been a very important product for women seeking fast toning results.

“Men’s primary reason for exercise is muscle tone so they tend to demand more strength machines, freeweights etc. Power Plate is a very useful product for those short on time such as busy executives looking for a 20-minute work out to cope with corporate stresses,” explains Dick.

Hotels should also consider offering exercise facilities for children, he suggests.

“Children are only interested in fitness if it is mixed with fun and referred to as activity. Al Kamda provides interactive children’s activity games such as Xergames, which includes individual and team agility and fitness games with Xertrainer, where children can throw balls, hit targets with batons, kick footballs at light targets and have energetic relay races against each other. Very little room is required for this as the product is fixed to one wall . Commercial dance mats are also extremely popular especially with younger or teenage girls — the hardest group to get to exercise,” says Dick.

Hotel gyms must also work harder to drive secondary spend, Dick urges. Top tips are:

• Promote PT sessions via in-room offers
• Offer Power Plate and offer special one-on-one sessions with an instructor; you charge for a 20-minute work personalised workout.
• Specific courses for weight management, core stability, or training for a specific event over a set period of time, usually six to eight weeks, can generate additional revenue. These are usually conducted at off-peak times and are a good way to get new members.
• Sell PT sessions into the user’s hotel room. Some people like to exercise in privacy. Al Kamda can provide hotels with space efficient, easy-to-move equipment for this.
• Sale of accessories; have retail gloves, belts, aerobic mats and so on available.
• Sales from cafe/juice bar, protein bars etc.

Product highlights

Al Kamda best sellers: Star Trac CV equipment, Nautilus strength equipment, Power Plate

New for 2009: Star Trac E Spinner, Xergames, which includes Xertrainer

Al Kamda
Tel: +971 4 266 4200
Email: sales@alkamda.com
Web: www.alkamda.com

According to Precor export manager for EMEA, Derek Burke, the key mistake hoteliers make where their leisure offering is concerned is not treating their gym as a separate profit centre.

“This means they don’t fully understand the value of their health club and often don’t invest sufficient funds in maintaining it. The result is outdated equipment and insufficient staff training, which in turn leads to a poor guest experience,” says Burke.

Therefore, his top three tips for maximising the success of a hotel gym are as follows:

• Create and deploy innovative ways to promote, communicate and otherwise display fitness and wellness programmes in a visually appealing manner on the hotel website. For frequent travellers making hotel choices, fitness and wellness features are currently treated as something of a checkmark, largely because most major hotel brands fail to promote those programmes on their hotel websites. Often, the fitness centre offering is limited to a mention as a property amenity, buried on a list of other amenities.
  Elevating the visibility of the fitness centre for travellers increases the likelihood of attracting the fitness-minded — many of whom are not brand loyal, even when they participate in hotel loyalty programmes.
• Deliver a consistently superior fitness centre experience through high-quality, recognisable brand equipment with superior biomechanics. Precor has found that fitness-minded consumers are acutely aware of their physical interactions with the equipment; this includes the “look and feel” as well as their overall perceptions of durability. Some, but by no means the majority, of these travellers believe the major brand manufacturers create “home-use” and “commercial-grade” equipment, with the former being far inferior to the latter. In short, to create an authentic, branded fitness experience, it is critical to install equipment of an equivalent quality to what one would encounter in a professional fitness centre.
• The ideal branded fitness centre experience should: be located on the highest floor possible; have as direct access as possible to an elevator; and provide views to the outside world. Many consumers, especially women, express significant concern about the location of many fitness centres in heavily trafficked areas. Likewise, Precor found that many consumers were unanimous in their disdain for fitness centres either located in basements or lacking any windows to the outside world.

Product highlights

Precor best sellers: Adaptive Motion Trainer (AMT), Elliptical Fitness Crosstrainer EFX576i, Low Impact Treadmill Experience Series 966i

New for 2009: The Experience Strength C-line and the Experience Strength S-Line

Precor
Tel: +971 50 453 4426
Web: www.precor.com

With the region’s hotels offering some of the most luxurious and high-tech facilities, it is no surprise that guests expect a similar level of comfort and functionality from their health club, says Glenn Colarossi, hospitality division president at Cybex International and a spa consultant with 20 years’ experience.

“Guests want the best bed, the best view, the best shower and Jacuzzi tub, and so on. It only makes sense that they would be looking for the same quality in their fitness facility and equipment,” he says.

Firstly, hoteliers need to provide a more complete offering to achieve a “home away from home” feel, says Colarossi.

“Arc trainers and ellipticals are quickly gaining, if not surpassing, the treadmill in usage. Most hotels are quick to add treadmills, but they need to be aware of equipment usage trends.

“Space is always an issue, so make it inviting and choose a manufacturer whose equipment has a smaller footprint. Include entertainment on the cardio as well as on the wall. If you can add a steam and/or sauna that would greatly enhance the facility as well,” he says.

Colarossi adds: “Have athletic clothes available on loan so guests don’t have to fill their suitcases with their workout wear. As for “watching the bottom line”, have head office call manufacturers directly to discuss national account pricing and value adds they can offer to win the exclusive business of your brand”.

Colarossi’s other top tips include:

• Increasing memberships: Make sure you have a complete offering that caters to the local market. Perform a competition analysis and determine any weaknesses of your competitors and capitalise on that. Offer incentives such as preferred room rates for members’ guests, discount on renting meeting rooms, discount or preferred seating in F&B outlets — all of these items will prove to be tremendous value-adds for your members and bring additional revenue to the hotel.
• Gym integration: Make your entire hotel more “health conscious”. Have healthy choices on your menus, have smokeless rooms/floors, have air cleaners in the rooms, have healthy snacks in your mini bar, have proper signage and visibility, include the gym on your in-room channel or property tour, and make sure it is noted on your website with photos.
• Equipment choice: Select a manufacturer that has equipment with a small footprint if you need to maximise space. Additionally, we have a line of “duals” which has the ability to perform two exercises or more on a single piece of equipment. To achieve the best service, support and maintenance contract, negotiate a single vendor/supplier for your chain of hotels; this will provide you with the most leverage.

Product highlights

Cybex best sellers: Arc Trainer, 750 Treadmill, FT-450

New for 2009: Cybex FT-450 Functional Trainer

Cybex
Tel: +1 203 406 0635
Fax: +1 203 357 8813
Email: gcolarossi@cybexintl.com
Web: www.cybexhospitality.com

According to Julia McPharlin from fitness equipment supplier Oemmebi, which is launching in the Middle East this month through local distributor Esadore International, of which McPharlin is also business development manager, not only are gyms a must for hotels but they should be included as part of an entire wellness offer.

“This is because the added value is even higher when the different areas are set up and offered in a co-ordinated and integrated way,” says McPharlin.

As well as ensuring that the gym is designed to suit the hotel in which it is located, McPharlin says that “the actual size of the gym must be coherent with the number of guest rooms at the hotel, the flow of users the hotel management intends to reach, the time spent in the gym room on average by users, and the level of access by non-guests”.

Convenience of use and safety should be the priority, adds McPharlin.

“Unless one or more trainers or supervisors are always present, manual loading machines and barbells with discs should be avoided. Weight stack machines, benches, dumbbells and cardiovascular equipment are the appropriate choice,” she says.

“Synthetic flooring allows for a higher degree of hygiene and for faster cleaning; parquet flooring adds elegance and class; and carpet is not the most appropriate floor material for a gym,” says McPharlin.
The use of towels should be encouraged, “ideally by free supply,” she adds.

McPharlin’s top tips for successful hotel gym management include:

• Equipment choice: When choosing equipment pay attention to things that the supplier may not tell you in advance and that you would discover when it is too late: maintenance requirements; which materials/tools should be supplied with the equipment); reliability; warranty; availability of technical assistance/maintenance services; availability of spare parts. The technical selection of machines is important, but keep in mind that the extensive range available on the market is more important for non-hotel fitness centres.
• Look at the options to customise gym equipment (choice of colours, upholsteries and the addition of the hotel logo) in order to maximise the hotel brand image.
• Cleanliness: Keep the centre clean and in perfect order: one set of dumbbells more or less impacts on nobody; lack of hygiene impacts on everybody.
• Quality: Don’t look at short term profitability: your target is long-term return and that is based on quality first.
• Satisfaction: Customer feedback should be monitored closely and any intervention to keep the quality in-line with the target must be immediate. A guest staying at the hotel will not return to the gym if their first experience does not meet his/her expectations.

Esadore Supplies (for Oemmebi)
Tel: +971 (0)4 431 0851
Fax: +971 (0)4 431 0854
Email: info@oemmebi-me.com
Webmail: www.oemmebi-me.com

Raymond Sport LLC managing partner Raymond Kelly, responsible for distributing brands such as Precor and Schwinn in the GCC, says the biggest mistakes made by hotel gyms in the region are not identifying the gym as a separate profit centre and not employing good enough staff.

Kelly’s tips for success are:

• Sales: Employ sales professionals to sell the gym benefits, target friends and family of existing members and operate a client loyalty programme.
• Integration: Use the Precor ClubCom® private TV network and digital signage system and integrate it with the hotel’s TV to advertise and sell the services, features and benefits of the hotel facilities (restaurants and spa) and the hotel chain in the gym. This can also be used to advertise third party services, so you can watch the dollars roll in.
• Staff: Employ experts in physiology and qualified fitness instructors who love what they do. There is not much of this around sadly, but it is the gym team, combined with a light, chic, lively, buzzing, happening environment, that will make users pick your facility over another.
• Group exercise: If you don’t have a dedicated studio, just round everybody up and go for it. A good instructor/presenter can infect the whole gym with enthusiasm for circuit training, which can be done in a group in the gym using existing equipment.

Product highlights

Raymond Sport best sellers: Precor AMT, Precor EFX, Precor FTS Glide

New for 2009: Simulated Altitude Training, www.ATS-altitude.com

Raymond Sport
Tel:+971 4 339 1331
Fax: +971 4 339 1080
Web: www.raymondsport.com

Hoteliers need to focus on offering a gym that meets the needs of their carefully profiled guests and potential users rather than designing it around a list of desired equipment, says Technogym regional sales director Middle East, Africa & India Michele Moro.

“First of all, define the aspiration and needs of the guest, then dedicate a proper space to cardio, stretching and functional training, then define the equipment needed to complete the workout experience in terms of strength, focusing on the major muscle groups that require more guided equipment,” says Moro.

“We need to know what makes the guests move — their motivation and aspirations — and then design a proper environment for them along with a client-oriented service,” he adds.

In terms of designing and managing the gym for maximum success, Moro says managers must recognise the gym as an “essential part of the hotel experience and business unit” and focus on the following aspects:

• Budgets: In many cases, budgets are misleading, because they are driven more by an idea of filling up a space on paper rather than to provide a consistent experience to the guest and support a business model linked to the operation of the hotel itself. Our suggestion in this regards is to start with 75% -80% of the equipment that the space may accommodate, saving money without compromising on quality. After six months to one year of operation, add the remaining 20-25% of the equipment and budget. In this way, the hotel will have a much better gym, investing in the correct equipment and also the cash flow and the hotel’s ROI should benefit.
• Supplier partnerships: See your equipment supplier as a partner, don’t consider equipment as commodities and be careful if someone gives or offers services for free, because this means the products are not valuable for them, therefore, of doubtful quality,
• Evaluate the financial investment over a period of five to seven years, considering also the residual value, the impact of the brand selected on the guest perception and brand value.
• Wellness packages: Offer wellness packages which include personal training or a workout experience, massage (sport massage) and healthy food, and use the gym, spa and F&B to promote the concept and work in synergy with each other, making the gym much more guest need and lifestyle-oriented. Provide equipment or a wellness corner in a certain number of suites to offer guests the choice of a personalised in-room experience.
• Secondary spend: Be creative, listen to your clients and ask them a lot of questions to proactively propose packages that may attract guests to try new services and experiences, like personal training, small group training, or programmes like stretching and back pain prevention that travellers specifically may enjoy.
• Maintenance: Insist your supplier’s technical team give training to hotel maintenance staff to perform basic checks. Most service calls come from a total lack of attention and understanding from the gym staff and cleaners that with a bit of attention could be prevented.

Product highlights

Technogym best sellers: Run Ecite 700 Treadmill with Active Wellness TV and iPod, Kinesis, FlexAbility, CardioWave

New for 2009: VISIO, a new digital platform for entertainment, communication, games, education and virtual training; IPTV, Vario, Kinesis One, FlexAbility, Group Cycling

Technogym
Tel: +971 4 337 5337
Email: infouae@technogym.com
Web: www.technogym.com