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Busy gyms are not a sign of a successful company. A packed facility is a sign of good marketing, great equipment, a fantastic environment - and poor management. Clients who need to queue to use a treadmill or wait significant times to use the squat rack will get frustrated and turn into former clients.
So it pays to know what parts of the day are busiest in your facility and caters to them accordingly.
This article will show you the busiest gym times and how you can manage your business around them.
What are business gym times
Generally, gyms are:
Gyms are generally busiest between 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
Weekends are also a busy time, particularly Saturday mornings. White-collar jobs rarely require weekend work, so many gymgoers get their weekend workout in as early as possible.
Friday nights are another busy gym time. Many clients finish work early and prefer to pump iron than party on a Friday.
What factors play a part in how busy a gym is?
It’s not hard to see that these peak gym times are before and after business hours. People like to get their workout in the morning before going to work and in the evening, after work.
As a result, dawn, the middle 8 hours of the day, and late evening are the quietest gym times.
It’s important to note that ‘busy’ is a very subjective term. What’s busy for a small boutique gym may be a slow day for a larger facility.
But as you also read earlier, the gym’s management is also a significant factor in how busy the gym is. Poor management, inadequate layout and sub-optimal layout equate to facilities being overwhelmed and not running efficiently.
A crowded and busy gym then leads to frustrated clients who decide to work out elsewhere.
How to manage a crowded gym
If you’re struggling to keep up with your clients during the busiest gym times, here are some simple and easy tips for managing your facility when it becomes crowded.
Introduce mandatory bookings
Stay in control of your facility during peak hours by making it mandatory for gymgoers to book a slot during the busiest of hours.
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By capping the number of people in your facility and requiring them to book, you’ll weed out those who have a more flexible schedule and ensure that your gym stays manageable during peak times.
PerfectGym’s facility booking software helps you visualise zone capacity and simplifies the process of booking classes and times during peak hours. It integrates flawlessly with your access control, allowing you to set access rules throughout the day.
Promote off-peak hours
Rather than knocking back clients altogether, promote the quieter times of the day. Incentivise those that work from home or have a more flexible schedule by making slower times cheaper or putting popular classes in quieter time slots.
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PerfectGym’s Business Intelligence and Analytics module looks at the historical data of your club. It can then pinpoint the specific off-peak hours in your facility and the classes that are most sought after. This automation and technology mean that you can spread the traffic in your facility throughout the day.
Know more about your equipment & classes
Treadmills, free weights and leg presses are some of the most popular equipment in any gym. So it pays to have more of them on hand than less popular equipment. Having more of the most popular equipment on hand during busy times means shorter waiting times, and you minimise the chances of bottlenecks and client frustration.
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During quieter times, though, this extra equipment may not get used. Therefore, making such a decision to double-down on popular equipment needs to coincide with a strategy to spread out numbers throughout the day.
Maintain your equipment
Keeping in the theme of equipment, damaged equipment can’t help your clients during their workout. While it might be cheaper to source second-hand equipment when starting your facility, it may be more expensive in the long run. Not just through the cost of repairing it when it breaks, but also the cost of churned and frustrated customers.
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Another benefit of buying new equipment from a reputable brand name is that it comes with a warranty, meaning you don’t have to pay for repairs. Modern equipment can often integrate with fintech, giving you an extra layer of data that you can use to learn about your customers.
Cater to those who can’t change their schedules
Due to work hours dictating the busiest gym times, some members simply cannot change the times they come to the gym to work out. It pays to ensure that those who have no choice but to work out during your busiest hours can do so with minimal hindrance.
You can help this by having staff on the floor offering assistance and alternative workouts to those who are waiting for a specific type of equipment.
Consider sending a newsletter to clients to inform them of the best’ while you wait’ workouts. PerfectGym’s Email Automation Software allows you to segment your email audiences. You send such content to clients who frequent your facility at the busiest times and not those that come during off-peak times.
Introduce more classes
When supply cannot keep up with demand, the value of what’s in demand grows. So adding more classes can help appease the demand for already busy classes.
However, implementing more classes may also mean bringing on more staff and creating chaos when it comes to booking those classes.
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Luckily, PerfectGym’s Club Management Software simplifies the process of booking classes but also manages the staff that will take those extra classes. Clients can book times on your dedicated mobile app to keep them up to date with other classes they may be interested in. Such a feature can help you further reduce demand at busy times and spread out foot traffic more evenly throughout the day.
Minimise POS times
As consumerism becomes more and more cashless, there are fewer and fewer reasons for your clients to spend time at a checkout paying for their gym memberships and managing their membership. PerfectGym’s Client Portal empowers your customer to manage their membership, pay for it and even purchase product packaging and family memberships away from your facility.
This helps keep clients away from your facility’s checkout and busy areas during peak hours and empowers them to interact with your facility while not physically there. This not only means fewer numbers in your facility during peak hours, but it also frees up your staff to get away from the desk and on the floor helping clients during those busy times.
Improve your gym layout
When your facility management software can integrate with turnstiles, touchpads and even equipment, you can see which areas are most popular and which areas are less frequented.
You can change your gym layout to better cater to clients during the busiest gym hours when you know this information.
It’s a little known fact that supermarkets put milk and bread, the most in-demand products, at the back of the store. This strategy makes customers walk through all the other products they need in the hope of upselling them.
But this is the exact antithesis of what you want to do in your gym during the busiest hours.
If your data shows that your treadmills are always busiest during peak hours, it makes sense to put them closest to the main entry. If the ropes are less popular, place them deeper into your facility. This means that foot traffic will congregate closest to the entrance and ultimately spend less time in your facility overall, compared to walking right into the gym to get to their desired equipment.
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Use real-time access control data
Comprehensive facility management software can help you limit access to busy parts of gyms during peak hours. Such technology is valuable in 24-hour facilities when staff members aren’t always on-hand to lend assistance.
Accessibility functionality built into membership cards or wristbands means that only those that have booked a particular class or time in a specific area get access. The result is an even distribution of clients throughout your facility, with no bottlenecks or overly busy areas.
Conclusion
PerfectGym is the all-in-one gym management system that can help you better prepare for the peak hours at your gym. Managing peak times can be tricky, and if done wrong, it can damage your image with some members. So making sure that all members are happy during peak times is crucial to the success of your gym. Thanks to PerfectGym predicting rush hour times and dispersing members, your busy facility will be better for both your business and the client's life.