Memberships fit for the future

Cheryl Hersey, The Fitness NED, looks at how HealthHero works with a number of major health club and fitness operators, offering their members a range of health services – including access to GPs, physios, dietitians and mental health counsellors

Health, nationally, is in decline. According to the BMC Public Health Journal, ‘More than one in three British adults are suffering from two or more chronic health conditions in middle age, such as recurrent back problems, mental ill-health, high blood pressure, diabetes and high-risk drinking’, Since the pandemic, discussions around gyms being viewed as an essential health service have been increasing, but with health programs usually focused on special populations, are we doing enough to support all members in pursuit of better health?

This approach makes strong commercial sense. A 2023 UK survey revealed that average consumers spend over £4,600 annually on wellness and self-care. Offering additional services via the gym membership is a way to tap into this spending. Injury or illness is also a major reason behind freezing or cancelling a membership. If operators can keep their members fit and healthy, it stands to reason that it will boost overall retention figures.

Bringing commercially viable wellness services into the gym membership Not all health services are appropriate, they need to fit into the health club or leisure centre model, without over-pressurising existing systems or staff. Operators need these services to be affordable and attractive to members, whilst ideally covering their own cost or better still generating their own income.

This is an area I have been looking at since 2020. I’ve worked with operators to explore opportunities such as bringing pharmacy concessions inside the four walls of the leisure centre, housing NHS testing centres in gym car parks and rolling blood testing into PT packages.

At the start of 2024, it was widely reported in the media that millions of people were waiting more than a month to see a doctor. This was the start of a series of media coverage that explored the depth of the problem and highlighted that it was only set to get worse.

I wondered if it would be possible to take the remote GP service out of the private healthcare policy and just embed that single service into the gym membership? I reached out to HealthHero, Europe’s largest provider of digital health services. They were not working in the fitness sector but were very open to understanding how it operates and building out bespoke services that would be just right for both the member and the operator.

More than one in three British adults are suffering from two or more chronic health conditions in middle age

We took the service to Everyone Active, who already had an established wellbeing vision, and they took a huge leap to be the first operator in the UK to create a brand new wellbeing membership, which incorporated a remote GP service for members. Village Health and Wellness Clubs followed suit at the start of 2024 and Parkwood Leisure, announced their launch of the remote GP service just this month.

On 1st August 2024, the British Medical Association announced an immediate work-to-rule action, which is seeing GPs choosing to limit their appointments to 25 a day, a number which represents a reduction of around a third of all appointments. NHS England has warned the action could cause significant disruption. Everyone Active, Village and Parkwood are well placed to support their members through this crisis.

Not just GPs

The remote GP service is just the start of what a wellbeing membership can offer. These forward thinking operators have proven that the gym membership no longer needs to be exclusively made up of gym, swim and group exercise – something that’s been the same for more than three decades.

Fitness First are a testament to this as they launch their premium membership in September. It’s packed full of wellness services that totally reinvent what the typical gym membership includes. In partnership with HealthHero, Fitness First premium members will have access to a remote physio, dietitian and mental health counsellor in addition to the GP service.

What’s next for the wellness membership? I’m looking at epigenetics, and the significant correlations that can be drawn between epigenetic modifications and biological age. If operators can work with biotech companies to help members learn their epigenetic age, they can support them in making lifestyle modifications which prevent the onset of age related disorders and help them to reset their biological clock.

There’s so much opportunity for operators to develop their membership offering, the trick is finding commercially viable products, which can be delivered at scale. In this way the operator can add value to the membership while protecting their margins, or even generating additional revenue. As an industry we must continue to think beyond traditional products and approaches to reach the true potential of the wellness membership.

WHAT THE OPERATORS SAY

Andy Farr, Strategic Director, Parkwood Leisure One of our corporate objectives is to tackle health inequality in the communities we serve, and we actively seek to provide wider wellbeing support to our customers. We introduced specialist nutritional support at the end of 2023 and the introduction of a GP service is the next step in continuing to support the wider wellbeing of our customers.

Our new Premium All-Inclusive Membership is available as either a bolt-on to existing memberships or as a standalone new membership. We have deliberately sought to keep the cost as low as possible and lower than other comparable offers in the market.

I think that members are looking for a wider wellness offering from their gym. We surveyed over 10,000 of our customers to understand their needs and this information has underpinned the development of the additional wellbeing services.

Justin Musgrove, CEO, Fitness First

Fitness First is seeking to reposition itself as a more holistic provider of health and wellbeing. Offering not just GP access but also physio, dietitian and counselling represents a significant step change from standard gym access memberships.

Now more than ever I think that members are looking for a wider wellness offering from their gym. There’s a noticeable change in member desire for healthier living and enhancing longevity.

We’ve talked for a long time about the fitness industry stepping up and doing more to support the holistic health of its members and we feel our new premium membership does just this. By being the first to offer the full range of HealthHero’s services, we feel we’re creating an accessible route for our members to access support typically reserved for expensive private healthcare cover.

We hope to deliver a transformative impact on members’ quality of life, like never before.

Anthony Heskins, National Sales Manager, Village Health and Fitness Clubs The health and fitness marketplace is highly competitive, particularly with the growth seen within the budget gym sector over the past decade. As a premium mid-market operator, Village strives to offer additional value through the membership beyond standard facility access.

Since launching HealthHero to our members at the start of this year, 1 in 10 have opted into the service, with these figures continuing to grow month-on-month, proving it to be a service our members value having access to.

Living a healthy lifestyle is much more than just exercising, it involves recovery, nutrition and diet, mental wellbeing and so much more. Our members are looking for a gym that can support them in their pursuit for a healthy lifestyle and our aim is to meet that need by providing support on all elements.

Duncan Jefford, Regional Director, Everyone Active The fitness sector must keep pushing boundaries and think differently in order to deliver a true wellness experience to members. At Everyone Active we consider ourselves to be pioneers of this approach, and we are proud that we were the first operator to reinvent the traditional gym membership. We also welcome the move from other operators to include such wellness services in their offering. As a sector we need to continue to drive change in order to future proof our industry.