Equinox are smashing it with 108 gyms covering 9 states and 3 countries (USA, Canada & UK). Membership to a single location is roughly £185pcm (plus a £400 initiation fee) however if you’re a frequent traveller to the US (105 of their clubs are in North America) you can choose to pay an extra £50 per month (£235pcm) to get access to all of their clubs.
Their clubs are finely finished with great equipment, well-trained staff and regularly cleaned facilities….no wonder more than 350,000 people have joined. That’s an average of 3,200 paying members per club.
To achieve this level of success requires 18,000 employees and an acceptance from Founder Harvey Spevak that Equinox can’t specialise in one particular area of fitness, but instead in design, quality and class, which is no bad thing.
However increasingly the health conscious are opting for experts in particular areas of fitness, be it for spinning (hence why they acquired SoulCycle), boxing, yoga or other specialist classes. This is why ClassPass have been so successful…they provide people with variety in multiple locations (albeit, once again, very US top heavy and not massively in favour of clubs – they take c. 50% of a class cost).
So, enter a new model which has recently been adopted by a number of luxury and specialist independent health clubs from different corners of the globe… ToneBox in Bangkok, BARE Fitness in Dubai and the Philippines to Griffin Club in LA and BXR in London.
A model that allows smaller independents to attract and retain would-be Equinox members without losing their specialist and personal touch.
Introducing reciprocity – the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit. This is a well-established model widely used in the private member’s club space and is proven to increase membership retention and revenues through ancillary spend and all from a like-minded audience to that of the club’s members.
What it means is that by being a member of a club that has adopted reciprocity you are granted access to other member’s-only clubs around the world, all through your home club membership.
The reason this model works well in the premium health club space is for two core factors…
- If you’re a member of a high-end independent health club then you like exclusivity and/ or specialism
- Membership retention and growth is one of the biggest problems facing the health club industry
The first factor…if boxing is my love, unless I join a high-end boxing gym in every city I travel to frequently (which would cost me thousands of pounds every month) then I’m currently not wholly satisfied…I have to find the next best thing when I travel and on a pay-as-you-go basis which means I’m not ticking the exclusivity box.
The second factor…rule no. 1 for club owners is to keep members happy. If as a club owner you can offer your members access to similar calibre clubs around the globe then you’re significantly more likely to a) attract more members and b) keep them.
And this is exactly what forward-thinking clubs around the world are doing through OtherClub. Their members can opt in to paying an additional £20 per month and with that can access a wide variety of clubs in multiple cities, from health clubs like Griffin Club in LA and spas like Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, right through to private business and social clubs like The Quorum in Delhi and private cocktail clubs in San Fransisco.
The answer; Equinox is the one if you travel predominantly to or within the USA and are looking for a large well-designed gym with great equipment. If however you’re looking for something more specialist and travel frequently further afield, join an OtherClub club and pay £20 extra per month to enjoy easy access to other clubs around the globe.