Hotel Gym Consultant Q&A with Matt Morley of Biofit
An interview with hotel and resort gym designer Matt Morley, Founder of Biofit gym consultants
How has the hotel gym evolved over recent years?
What we’re seeing are a few bold hotel brands taking their gym offer on a journey from relative uniformity to Unique Selling Point (USP), from bland vanilla to a branded experience.
Truly memorable, concept-driven gym facilities require expertise in interior design, fitness training, and a near obsession with gym equipment selection.
Typically however a hotel gym is simply off-loaded onto an architect studio who in turn look for a simple yet elegant solution that involves one big equipment brand like Technogym or Lifefitness proposing an equipment-heavy selection aligned with their own sales targets, latest collections and so on.
Add in some mirrored glass on the walls, a hard-wearing floor tile and you’re good to go. The result isn’t going to be bad, the problem is that it’s never ‘great’.
It therefore takes a certain type of manager or hotel group to seek out a specialist gym designer to raise the bar.
The Sani / Ikos Group did this recently with my company Biofit as the gym experience their guests are increasingly accustomed to at home is now more akin to a boutique gym and fitness studio; their resort gyms therefore need to stay one step ahead of those benchmarks, that’s a job for a specialist gym consultant.
Why is the hotel gym so often an afterthought?
It really comes down to numbers. Floor space in any hotel or resort is at a premium, with priority going to revenue generating solutions first, a gym is often left with the crumbs left over once rooms, F&B and events divisions have all had their share of the pie.
This is where the lower-ground shoebox gym with no natural light comes in - it ticks the box in terms of offering a facility but goes no further. It is the lowest common denominator solution but as it’s deemed not to add to average daily spend anyway, management may simply see this as ‘good enough’ in the circumstances.
The only real exceptions tend to come from owners or operates that have a particular connection with fitness, be it personal or professional, such as health and fitness oriented Equinox Hotels, or wellness resorts like Six Senses.
What are the key elements of a successful fitness concept?
Fundamentally, there is no one size fits all approach so we start with three main strategic inputs: gym industry trends, an understanding of the guest profiles, and the hotel brand itself that can, sometimes, help steer the gym concept from above.
Balancing these three elements means we ground the new gym concept in market knowledge to minimize risk while ensuring the concept matches the training requirements of the target guests and integrates smoothly into the personality of the hotel brand in question.
Clearly, for hotel gym equipment, some combination of strength and cardio equipment is going to be on the cards here however rows of isolation strength machines are no longer necessary, despite what the equipment brand sales reps say!
Times have changed, functional fitness, yoga, stretching, Crossfit style training and indeed calisthenics are here to stay, so younger generations are looking for a little more space to move around in. Decreasing your equipment density can actually be a good thing on this basis.
Cardio machinery isn’t going anywhere though, for obvious reasons, but hotel gyms can look beyond recline bikes and ellipticals to a mix of both standard and manual treadmills, spin bikes and rowers.
How important is a quality gym space to today’s traveller?
There is a growing tribe of amateur athletes, yoga fanatics and Crossfitters who remain largely ignored by most hotel brands today. Equinox are all over this demographic in the US however and we expect other hospitality groups to follow suit in coming years.
Fritton Lake in Norfolk are already offering wild swimming and trail running around their estate, with the launch of their new Biofit-designed ‘barn gym’ this autumn they will combine sustainable interiors with a focus on sports performance equipment in order to cater to exactly that type of audience.
Equally, there are already signs of a shift away from a hotel having one fixed place in which guests can workout - high end brands need to offer in-room gym equipment options too now, ideally with a curated selection of equipment combined with some virtual training software, for example.
For the new Tearose Hotel just outside Florence opening in Q1 of 2023 Biofit is designing an indoor-outdoor gym facility as well as creating packs of in-suite fitness equipment and even an on-demand equipment delivery service for guests who want to train outside in nature in private.
Where do you see the hotel gym headed in the future?
Wellbeing design principles can create healthy gym interiors with functional benefits on mind and body. Why gyms have not leapt on this concept yet is beyond me, but the revolution is coming…!
Think circadian lighting systems, indoor air purification, non-toxic material choices and sustainable flooring tiles combined with eco cleaning protocols, biophilic design to bring the outside world in multi-sensory wellness spaces that combine scent, sound and tactile finishes.
Finally, perhaps the most obvious trend to emerge from the COVID experience is the shift to indoor-outdoor or fully outdoor gym spaces supplementing an existing gym space.
This gives guests greater peace of mind, lightens the load on the indoor gym in terms of user capacity at peak times and, if appropriately located, need not equate to additional operational responsibility for the management team either. Plus there are no HVAC / MEP costs to worry about!