5 key considerations when designing your hotel's fitness and well-being offer
Gyms have gone from being considered as one more service for many hotels to being a differentiating and decisive element when choosing between one accommodation or another. Their ability to create value for the customer, as well as the potential to retain guests, make them an asset to be seriously considered when designing the different spaces of a hotel.
As more and more consumers seek to integrate wellness into their lifestyle, new opportunities are opening up for hotels to incorporate wellness offerings into their portfolio of experiences. This strategy not only helps them stand out from the competition, but also gives them added value to be in a position to generate further revenue from guests.
Tip: The hotel gym is not an expense, it is a great source of value. It allows you to:
• Offer a differentiating service
• Get higher ratings
• Increase the satisfaction of your guests
Below, we share five considerations that you should consider when designing the fitness and well-being offer of your hotel:
1) FLEXIBILITY, so that your guests can train when and how they want: in the fitness room of the gym, in an outdoor area watching the sunset or from their own room.
For this, it is important to have equipment that can be easily moved thanks to its light weight or transport wheels so that it can be relocated quickly and effortlessly, such as rowers, exercise bikes, and benches.
If you decide to move your wellness offer into the room, we recommend adding some accessories, such as stability balls, resistance bands, or dumbbells. They provide a variety of training options, do not take up a lot of space, and can be easily stored in a closet.
2) VARIETY, to offer the diversity of fitness equipment so that your guests can keep up with their training routines during their stay.
According to the 2020 Chicago O'Hare International Airport Life Fitness study, the number one reason guests do not use hotel fitness facilities is lack of equipment variety (47%).
When choosing fitness equipment, keep in mind that your guests have different fitness levels, abilities, and preferences. For this reason, it is essential to adapt your fitness offer and ensure that the different training areas have the necessary equipment so that everyone can train comfortably and enjoy a good training experience at your hotel.
3) PERSONALISATION, so that your guests achieve their fitness goals at their own pace.
Users expect training to fit their physical condition so they can move toward their goals without losing motivation along the way. In fact, 78% of travelers are willing to pay for personal training spaces at the hotels where they stay (source: Life Fitness and Qualtrics).
To be able to offer adequate advice, you should have a team of professional fitness trainers qualified to prescribe exercises, set objectives and goals, and motivate individuals. This way, you will be able to help your guests achieve the best results in the shortest possible time and in the safest and most effective way, as well as generating a secondary source of income.
4) ENTERTAINMENT, to keep your guests motivated through unique and interactive training experiences.
A happy customer is 14% more likely to book the same hotel in the future (Accor: It's a wellness world). And not only that, according to this same study carried out by Accor, 38% of customers who declared themselves satisfied with their training experience were more likely to rate their hotel with the highest score.
And how do we make guests happy and satisfied? There are many factors that determine the experience of a client, but there is no doubt that one of them is the training experience. Exercising is important to improve our health, but it is also a unique alternative to have fun and disconnect from day-to-day responsibilities.
Make sure you incorporate fun training programs into your offerings and have entertainment options on your equipment – Check out Life Fitness on Demand, our wide variety of online cardio classes designed for users of different fitness levels.
5) SPACE DESIGN, to create a space where your guests really enjoy training.
Creating a fitness room is not just about distributing fitness machines around the room. There are many other factors that you must consider, such as lighting, music, floors, decoration, etc. These elements can help you define the different zones creating different training atmospheres and help guests to carry out their training routine successfully.
Additionally, to create a functional space you must consider the flow of training within the room, that is, how people will move within the gym. By giving this some thought, you will be able to create a good transition between the different areas of the hotel gym so that your guests enjoy the best training experience.
Do you want to receive more information?
At Life Fitness we are committed to providing you with the best fitness and wellness solutions for your hotel. Whether you need to update your fitness machines, remodel your gym area, or receive personalized advice to improve your wellness offering, Life Fitness is here to help you increase guest satisfaction. Let’s talk!