interview
“Engaging with the NGBs will help us
ensure we have a solution ready and waiting for people whose interest in a particular activity is sparked by the Olympics. Not only that, but Sport England is also now releasing its new four-year plan: for the fi rst time, the strategy includes operators and not just the NGBs. We’re now being seen as part of the solution when it comes to sports development. “A lot of the NGBs’ funding currently
relies on engaging with young adults aged between 16 and 24, while our agenda to date has been more focused on children aged between eight and 14 – we’ve been working closely with the ASA and now have about 50,000 children of that age in swimming lessons. So there’s a lot to be gained from working with NGBs: we can provide access to the younger age groups for them, while they can help engage our older groups. “We’re currently talking to Triathlon
England about its schools triathlon series, for example, looking to engage the large number of children participating in wet-side activities in dry-side activities too. We feel there’s synergy between Everyone Active’s objectives and what Triathlon England is trying to do.”
driving participation So where does King see Everyone Active as sitting in the market? “That’s a fascinating question. The local authority offering has vastly improved over the last 10 years and I think that impacts on where we sit in the marketplace – we have some absolutely first-class facilities in our portfolio nowadays. Not only that but, while we’ve kept our pricing models pretty steady, all around us other people’s pricing models have changed dramatically. Where before we
36
SLM says stronger collaboration with NGBs will bring benefits to both sides, as well as access to a wider age range of youngsters
could say we were the cheapest, now it’s about value for money.” Certainly Everyone Active would
appear to be delivering that, winning FLAME Leisure Centre Operator of the Year 2011 – the second year in a row that it has won the award. “For me, it’s about having a very clear brand vision – a clear understanding of what we’re trying to do. I believe we have to do two things well: we have to be a fi rst-class leisure operator and we need to be fi rst-class at using customer data. If we can pull those two things together, we end up with a fi rst-class business.” Interestingly however, while leisure
centre operation will remain at the heart of the business, there is now also a possibility of diversifying into new areas. Driven by, as King says, “a need among local authorities to seek value in all of the services they offer their communities”, recent tenders have encompassed services such as theatres and libraries. “We’re a management contracting
company with a good infrastructure behind us and expertise in managing services,” says King. “We’re not experts at running libraries or museums, but we know people who are and we can employ them. While we continue to see ourselves primarily as a leisure operator, there’s no doubt at all that we could manage other types of services. “We’d also then be able to talk to our
customers about a broader range of services – talking to library customers who don’t yet use a leisure centre about the facilities on offer, for example.
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
“The thing that always amazes me is
how many people are out there who at one time have been a member of a leisure centre or health club, but now aren’t. Clearly at one stage they considered a more active lifestyle and we did something to turn them off. The industry really has to think of ways to re-engage with that group of customers. “People are so diverse, from being
incredibly physically fi t right through to the extremely unhealthy end of the scale. We may not be able to engage with everyone on that spectrum, but we certainly have to be engaging with more than we currently are. “The FIA is encouraging operators to
consider that, and I think its TwentyTen Commission is a really good plan – but I don’t think that it has yet been understood by everyone in the industry and it needs to be cascaded out more. “Essentially it’s all about going through
the 12 per cent ceiling, and when you look at the fi ve points on the plan, a lot of it’s already in progress: the skills agenda is being addressed via initiatives such as SPELG; exercise is medicine is gathering pace under Dr John Searle and the new research institute in Greenwich (see HCM Aug 11, p24); and the concept of leisure centres being activity hubs in the community is certainly one that we’ve focused on at Everyone Active. “But I’m not sure everyone has
picked up on all this. There are some really good issues in there that need reinforcing if we’re to really drive the participation agenda and go beyond the 12 per cent population penetration. With Everyone Active’s goal of one million active customers, we hope to play a part in achieving that.”
healthclub@leisuremedia.com kate cracknell
october 2011 © cybertrek 2011
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