climbing wall, designed for both The Soho club contains a 75sq m
novice and intermediate climbers
experience really could be better. I think all too often the focus is on how soft the towel is rather than on how good the treatment is. “I realise going into spa is quite ambitious but – and I may have to eat my words – I believe it will be less hard than running a medical centre.”
SECTOR ANALYSIS
And yet, in spite of The Third Space’s success in running a medical offering, Dunmore dismisses the fitness indus- try’s potential to link in more closely with the healthcare sector.
“It’s never going to happen,” he says. “People are living in a dream world. Getting practitioners to get to the point where they’re confident enough to refer to another practitioner requires them to know each other quite well.
ISSUE 1 2011 © cybertrek 2011
They just won’t do it.
“In any case, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just saying we’re the health and fitness sector. What’s wrong with being really good at helping people get fitter? It’s already a great industry and it has to be the way of the future, because more people are see- ing the benefits of exercise across all ages. Why do we have to start using long words to describe what we offer?” Saying all that, does Dunmore even see The Third Space as part of the health and fitness industry? “Well, of course we’re part of that sector – the leisure industry – but do I think we’re part of the health and fitness indus- try as provided by clubs across the UK? No. Other operators would look at us and tell us we run a very bad busi- ness: far too many employees, towels
twice as large as they need to be and so on. They’d probably take all that out with a view to making more cash. I believe churn would go up as a result. “Now they might be right, but all I would say is that I have a solid busi- ness that’s grown even in the tough conditions of the last financial year. We were recently voted ‘London’s Best Health & Fitness Facility 2010’ at the London Lifestyle Awards and we have very, very high levels of retention, even in the transient marketplace of Soho. If we can now replicate that in two or three other places, then I think it proves the strength of our brand and our business model. “Most clubs are run as cash cows. Repairs and maintenance expendi- ture is minimal and there’s a low-level approach to customer service. But we’re a retail business, and as they say ‘retail is detail’. If you focus on the minutiae and get those right every single day, and if you invest, you’ll have a fantastic product. But the industry doesn’t always do that. “One of the other things that sur- prises me about the industry is that it’s unbelievably arrogant about mem- bers. The prevalent attitude seems to be that, once someone signs up, that’s it – they’re in and you can move onto the next kill. But you just can’t build a business on that. “The professionalisation of the indus-
try is also aeons away, with no really good training programmes. The han- dling of employees and the rates of appreciation or pay that they receive are also astonishingly low given the skills of some of those in the industry – the personal trainers out there with sports science degrees and a wealth of knowledge, for example. “On the plus side, I think the industry as a whole is getting better at commu- nicating the value of regular exercise, and it’s trying to become a customer service industry,” concludes Dunmore. “But that’s still a long way away.” l
Read Leisure Management online
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