Are you really fit to run a gym?

10 October 2003
Are you really fit to run a gym?

David Munro is surprisingly honest when it comes to having a health club at his 40-bedroom Quy Mills hotel, 10 minutes from the centre of Cambridge. "We thought Cambridge was too saturated, we didn't think we'd get the membership," he admits, "but we had our arms twisted."

A month after opening the club this August, 200 of the 800 members it needs had already signed up.

It was Dave Courteen, managing director of health club operator and consultant Fitness Express, who finally persuaded Munro to invest in the £1.2m barn conversion. After an assessment of local demographics, Courteen was certain there was a market for a health club at Quy Mills, despite the fact Cambridge was well served.

Unusually, Fitness Express, primarily a management company with 22 hotel leisure club contracts in the UK, including Millennium & Copthorne, was so convinced the club would work at Quy Mills that it stumped up £250,000 of the total £750,000-£1m cost.

And if you reckon gyms are going out of fashion, replaced by Pilates and yoga, think again. Courteen, for one, says the fitness market is still growing. "The picture you get, because of the fall from grace of some of the major chains, is that the industry is going backwards. Yes, the growth rate has slowed, but more and more people are joining health clubs, albeit at a slower rate."

A recent report from the Leisure Database Company backs this up. It found that more Britons than ever are signing up to get fit by joining a gym. About 10% of the population are members of a health club - a 1% rise on figures from two years ago - and the company estimates that the health and fitness industry could support a further 300-400 clubs over the next four to five years.

Courteen believes it's the gimmicky days of fitness fads that are over, rather than people's desire to get fit. "Now it's all about people exercising and having a health lifestyle," he says. "People are more keen on cardiovascular [CV] exercising, which is all about having a healthy heart. Most gyms nowadays have a predominance of CV equipment."

Quy Mills, in Stoke-cum-Quy, is a three-star hotel which has been owned by Munro for six-and-a-half years. The main building is a former water mill built around 1830, surrounded by a mill house and a series of listed barns, some of which have been converted into guest blocks. "It's an eight-year project," says Munro, who has spent £2m-£2.25m turning what was "a very basic hotel with 24 bedrooms" into a smart, modern hotel with a quirky, eclectic style.

But it's the pristine new leisure club that currently makes the most impact, and Munro is justifiably proud of it. For him there's no doubting the sense of the arrangement. "Many hotel leisure clubs don't work, because they don't employ professionals," he says.

A specialist company can also help with some of the details, such as controlling costs, employing the right staff and meeting health and safety standards. For example, the pool at Quy Mills is 12m x 8m, and 1.4m deep. Any deeper or larger and they would have to employ a permanent lifeguard to comply with health and safety rules. The reception office backs on to the pool, which means the two members of staff on duty can see what's going on. As a result, staff costs are reduced and safety regulations aren't compromised.

"We get called into hotels with 1.5m pools and end up saying, ‘That's fine, but your staffing costs are going to increase because you need a lifeguard,'" explains Fitness Express business development manager Will Sommerville. "We prefer to get called in at the design stage, because in the long term you can save money just by knowing these things."

Quy Mills is aiming for just 800 members at a reasonable £45 a month for full membership with a joining fee of £99, albeit discounted for founder members. Sommerville says one of the most important things is retaining membership. Industry average retention levels run at about 40%, while Fitness Express boasts a membership retention of nearly 70%. The fact that it costs three times as much to attract a new member as it does to retain an existing one is important and one of the key reasons why service at the club is very personal. Hotel health clubs are really about leisure, Sommerville says. "You can't compete with the big clubs on facilities, so you have to differentiate yourself through personal service."

David Munro is hopeful that the leisure club will boost the hotel's image and attract more short-break guests. But having made the investment, it's now down to Fitness Express to deliver the results.

A tour around the Quy Mills leisure club

  • A 12m x 8m pool with Jacuzzi, steam room and sauna.
  • Ample changing facilities. There's a women's changing area at poolside, although the shape of the building meant that the men's facility is the other side of reception.
  • 130sq m gym, split into an ab and stretch area and the main gym. £80,000 bought Quy Mills the latest equipment, complete with personal screens.
  • Most of the gym's cardiovascular equipment is programmable, and steppers have silver panels on the handles that monitor and relay your heart rate. Cardiovascular equipment all has personal screens so members can use their headphones and listen to what they want.
  • Half of the kit is cardiovascular equipment and the rest resistance-training equipment. Quy Mills has two step machines; four Precor C956 treadmills with automatic stopping and cord-operated stopping; three C842 recumbent cycles; four stretch trainers; three Precor EFX 546 elliptical trainers, which reduce impact on the knees; two rowing machines; and three C842 upright cycles.
  • The leisure club will hold about 50 people at any one time.
The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking