Social Media and Leisure Centres

Print and broadcast media were the main sources of information about sports centres and sport more widely in the 20th century, but with the advent of widespread access to the internet and associated social media platforms in the 21st century, the media landscape has changed for leisure centres in the same way as it has for society as a whole. This has meant a significant and dynamic change of emphasis in the way in which centres communicate with their users and their wider communities.

The principal social media platforms used by centres and by many other businesses have been Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. These in their different forms have provided centres with different methods of communication. They have enabled centre operators to personalise their marketing and promotional activities in a much more targeted manner, for example using promotional videos on YouTube, brief targeted messaging to members on Twitter and wider community advertising through Facebook. In addition, many centres feature on the Trip Advisor website for their local area, with accompanying user reviews.

The rate of change in social media is very rapid and some operators have found it difficult to keep pace with and maximise the growing potential applications of the technology; while others have developed systems such as their own mobile phone apps to enable customers to remotely access a wide variety of services from booking classes to linking the centre’s technology to the users wearable devices such as Fitbit and Apple and other smart watches. This has enabled what David Minton, founder of the Leisure Data Base Company and one of the leaders in monitoring leisure industry trends, calls “hyper personalisation.”

Consumers of social media are constantly concerned about the safety of their data as there have been high profile cases of customer information being hacked and abused. Centres have, therefore, had to develop sophisticated data protection policies to ensure customer trust. At the time of publication there have been no reported cases of data protection problems from leisure centre sites.

During the enforced closure of centres as a result of the Covid crisis of 2020/ 2021, home exercise via social media from the likes of Joe Wicks and Peleton etc. have become a popular feature of people’s activity plans. It is estimated that home workouts increased from 8% to 52% in 2020 (Leisure Database Company.)  What degree of risk this poses to centres highly reliant on gym income remains to be seen. But those who have been most innovative during the crisis have used their own social media services to enable at home online fitness by personalised exercise regimes, live streaming of classes etc. in the hope of maintaining the personal link to existing clients and encouraging them back to the physical gym on re-opening.

In order to examine the scale of the use of social media by centres the Project carried out a study of a random sample of 60 centres, approximately 10% of centres listed in the project index, to see how they were using social media. It must be noted that this exercise was carried out during the period when centres across the UK were closed due to lockdown measures and therefore it was not possible to evaluate the volume of activity on the various platforms listed. The sample covered all four of the Home Nations which have adopted different lockdown policies at different times.

Some of the results of the survey –

Websites – all 60 centres had their own websites; of these 20 (33%) had generic websites produced by large operators which provided standard company/ trust information as well as local information. The remaining 66% were individually designed or covered a small number of local centres.

Mobile Phone Apps – 25 centres (42%) offered their own downloadable apps which provided a variety of services from direct booking of activities to exercise programme recommendations and other customer benefits.

Facebook was the most frequently used social media platform used by a total of 55 centres (92%) followed by Twitter, 51 centres (85%); Instagram, 39 centres (65%) and YouTube, 26 centres (43%).

Online Booking – 38 centres (64%) allowed bookings to be made online via the website while 22 centres (37%) provided exclusive access to online resources to members only.

A small number of centres or individuals (4) wrote BLOGS which were accessible via the website.

25 Centres (42%) provided other online services including using other social media platforms such as Pinterest and, as mentioned above, 15 centres (25%) (mainly larger national operators) provided access to live streaming or online classes for members which may have been a specific response to the Covid closures.

Social media has revolutionised many areas of society including leisure centres and their operations and, as David Minton has said, “The future will be digital and customised”.

Surveyed and prepared by Hywel Griffiths – February 2021

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