After the year like no other Industry leaders explain the challenges that fitness faces in 2021 while also look at the opportunities for the industry With the Coronavirus pandemic impacting the fitness industry with enforced closures and apprehensive consumers often hesitant to return to facilities, the fitness industry is looking to move on in 2021. Australasian Leisure Management asked key industry stakeholders what they see as the key issues facing the fitness club/gym/studio sector in 2021 and how they think the challenges can be overcome.
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“While this continues to be somewhat of an issue we see it normalising over the next six months as the vaccines are rolled out across most of APAC. Efficacy of the vaccines and the speed to get a substantive proportion of the population vaccinated will also play a part in our recovery while also mitigating the issues that we see with cluster breakouts that have caused some disruption. We have seen some shifts towards at-home fitness from a content and equipment perspective although we see this as helping grow the category and provide more flexible consumption. We can see from our customer feedback that time spent working out before the pandemic was ‘me time’, and part of the satisfaction of going to the gym is being able to focus on the self and being part of a community that values self-improvement.”
Greg Oliver, Group Chief Executive and Managing Director, Fitness and Lifestyle Group “We are very optimistic in regards to the 2021 outlook and expect to see a strong bounce towards the second half of the calendar year. Clearly, the impacts of the virus are affecting the industry to varying degrees across the globe, pleasingly for us the APAC regions have been less impacted across sales performance and member retention metrics. “On the domestic front, at a macro level, we are confident that consumer demand for our product and services will remain high, especially as the fear of congregation subsides and the need to regain the sense of community and personal connection drives consumers back into our facilities. While there is still some concern around the removal or watering down of the government economic stimulus programs currently offered we expect that the return to economic growth and continued consumer spending will remain strong. Our products have shown their resilience through tough economic conditions due to the almost non-discretionary nature of the category, although in the management of COVID, where the restrictions and controls have been mandated outside of our control the capacity and operating restrictions were debilitating. 30 Australasian Leisure Management Issue 142
Mel Tempest, fitness business influencer, speaker, podcaster and founder at Ignite Fitness Business Events “When the crisis hit in March businesses pivoted online, and this was not just gym owners creating online classes but also events, educational training, personal training - whatever it was it went online. “And the year saw control of our businesses taken away - our wages, our security, our hopes - we were dependent on those voted in and who now paid our wages and, unfortunately, a lot of us were at the mercy of landlords.
