Comparing Health and Fitness Club & Spa Markets

Marketing your health club or spa – or planning to add a health and fitness club or spa to your business?

During the last few years many hotels have added spa facilities to their health and fitness clubs, whilst private health and fitness club operators have toyed with the idea of adding spas too.

On the face of it, these two facilities are somewhat complimentary but an essential question is: ‘Should the two facilities should be marketed to the same people in the same way?’
To resolve this issue we analysed user data from two clubs operated by one of our clients. Both are private health and fitness clubs with day spa facilities. The data from each club was profiled using a geodemographic profiling system, we run the ACORN (A Classification Of residential Neighbourhoods) system in-house, and aggregated.

Test Case Results
In each case we identified the different types of people using the facilities and noted where they lived. The results were then aggregated to show the following:

• Almost 70% of health and fitness club members lived within 15 minutes of the facilities. Surveys elsewhere have shown that in more urban areas this ratio is even higher – often with 90% of members living within 10 to 15 minutes. Almost all members lived within 30 minutes and it is highly likely that those living further away travelled to the area to work.
• In comparison only 60% of day spa users lived within 30 minutes and over 20% travelled for more than an hour to use the facilities.
• Almost 70% of health and fitness club members came from the top socio-economic, or from the 25% most wealthy families in the area, whilst just over half of spa users came from the same group.

What Does This Mean for You?

• Members of hotel based health and fitness clubs are drawn from a narrower demographic market than day spa visitors, probably due to spa users enjoying special treats and day access has wider market appeal than the monthly membership subscriptions employed by health clubs.
• Health and fitness club members are more open to be targeted by direct marketing activity: door drops, direct mail, postcards, leaflet distribution etc. as area penetration levels are higher. Spa marketing is more dependent upon radio, press, local magazines etc., though well targeted very local direct marketing activity is also a possibility. Partnership/ affiliate marketing over a wide area may also be affective for spas – linking with hair dressers, beauticians, wedding organisers for example.
• Spas need to add value per visit to their customer analysis to increase the effectiveness of their marketing activity. Whilst health and fitness should monitor member value by taking into account length and types of members, it is highly likely that spa users will demonstrate greater variations in user values – and astute operators need to know the differences in value represented by different user profiles.
• The profile of spa day users may be wider than you think. Don’t limit your spa marketing activity based on your own perceptions – they may be wrong.
• As noted elsewhere on these pages, define your target user profile at the earliest possible stage in the development process.

Also see: how to use members to increase revenues in your health and fitness club.

The techniques applied above can be applied for any business marketing to consumers. We have previously used then for testing restaurant, retail and even Christmas party markets.