The experts and consultants who have participated in the Forum highlight numerous aspects in which gyms and sports centers must dedicate efforts to face the year 2023.
Some of the challenges they list, among many others, are: improving customer loyalty; value the services offered; digest the technological revolution and take advantage of the innovations offered by the digital environment; improve the productivity and working conditions of the templates; develop strategies to attract new users; keep up with exercise and training trends; stop focusing only on price; and that the different business models learn to coexist in the sector.
some of the phrases
The complete article is only available in the Fitnessgym section of the magazine number 457. Here are some of the most outstanding phrases, although the analyzes are much more extensive in the CMDsport Forum:
CHANO JIMENEZ
There are several pending subjects for this year 2023 in the fitness sector. The first, to continue improving customer loyalty, with services that optimize ratios of adherence to physical exercise. Another is the enhancement of fitness at a social level and achieving its reflection in the prices and margins of the operators. Also digest the technological revolution and take advantage of the innovations and possibilities offered by the digital field. And, finally, improve the productivity and working conditions of the workforce.
IGOID Leonor Gallardo
Technology will continue to advance and improve the way that coaches and athletes can improve their performance. This means that trainers can be more creative and personalized. There are new advances and developments in sports nutrition, rehabilitation, sports medicine and scientific research that will allow athletes to recover faster from injuries and prevent them, recover and stay healthy and how the human body responds to physical activity and how long-term results can be improved.
The use of technology for the measurement and analysis of athlete data is also positive, which will continue to improve performance, with more efficient, effective, fun, interactive and motivating forms of training. The popularity of fitness culture will continue to grow, which means that more people will be interested in improving their health and performance.
VALGO Manel Valcarce
The main challenge of 2023 will be to maintain ourselves as a welfare choice in the population over other options. And continue the habit of practicing sports, raising awareness of the benefits that physical activity offers. We must manage to reach those audiences that have abandoned, or those that we have not yet been able to attract, so that they try and stay using the fitness centers.
The best thing is the great adaptability of the sector in the face of the new customer management challenges and the specific actions that are being carried out at the level of activities offered, adaptation of spaces, use of technology, so that they see physical activity as an essential practice and a lifestyle of its own.
WSCONSULTING Pablo Viñaspre
One of the main challenges will be to be able to convey the value that fitness clubs provide to users. Currently the focus is only on price and that is very negative for the industry, since it turns it into a ‘commodity’. It is not just about raising prices, which is something important, but also about focusing on value: that is, clubs should stop making recruitment campaigns focused on price and focus them on the value they provide. In this way, the industry would build value in front of potential customers, which would attract more users willing to pay a higher price.
I am concerned that the sector has price as its main selling point, which is what is currently happening in most cases. I am also concerned that management is based too much on cost control and that this limits the innovation, differentiation and growth of many clubs. Cost management is important, but we must look more in the medium and long term and aspire to be increasingly better and more competitive in what the client is going to demand of us in the future.
MORE ON THE WEB Mª Angeles of Santiago
We list the challenges that we consider most relevant. One, increase the percentage of penetration of physical activity in sports centers through awareness campaigns where everyone takes place and feels integrated. Two, incorporate operational novelties to attract new attendees to fitness centers: young people who want to train in ‘traditional’ centers but using their favorite influencers.
Three, live with the online models, not so much because of the sports center applications, but because of the integration of applications, instruments and techniques within their regular training. Four, accept and live with the new models that are landing in Spain. And that the investment funds that own the large Spanish operators consider that 2023 will be the year of recovery and that very notable mergers take place.
UNOFIT Aitor Reche
The main challenge is the general context situation and its influence on the companies that operate in the fitness market, the increase in inflation and associated costs being significant. Faced with this uncertainty, some of the challenges for this new year will be: the criteria for establishing prices through an adjustment and rationalization of costs to maintain competitiveness; the need to generate confidence and optimism to the client/user; the adaptation of the service to the new needs of the market; the use of technologies; and, definitely, investing in sustainability to reduce the environmental impact of sports facilities and its impact on the cost of supplies.
Read this information in the digital magazine on pages 17 and 17 of number 457 of CMDsport.
