Lifetime Training takes fitness ‘naked’ at Fitness Directors’ Summit
Lifetime Training encouraged top industry operators to get ‘naked’ at its sixth annual Fitness Directors’ Summit.
The theme focussed on ‘stripping’ back to the corporate ‘bare’ essentials, to review what is at the heart of each business and why it is being delivered in this way: What should traditional health clubs be driving to add value and how can they dial up 1% of the key elements of their business for maximum benefit?
Attendees of this unique event included health club chains and trusts 1Life, Active Nation, Aspria, David Lloyd Leisure, Fitness First, Fit For Sport, Halo Leisure, Jubilee Hall Trust, Lifestyle Fitness, Nuffield Health, Serco Leisure, as well as Fearless Consulting. Executive Director from ukactive, Stephen Ward, was also on hand to discuss how CIMSPA, the fitness industry’s Chartered Institute and gatekeeper for educational standards, which has been tasked with standardising qualifications, would best serve the sector.
Held on 3rd September at the Greenway Hotel & Spa, which is tucked ‘out of the way’ near Cheltenham, this ‘blue skies’ discursive event focussed on collaboratively and organically identifying current trends with emphasis on technology, data and personalisation of customer service. Key questions included how, as a people based and communication driven industry imbued with behavioural change, technology can be used to best effect.
Facilitators Barry Holmes and Stephen Ford from Zoom Creates assisted the participants to ‘surface’ four key themes as the top priorities for the future of the industry:
1. Without Walls: How to make it easy for people to adopt behavioural change.
2. The State of the nation’s health: Consumers are increasingly more health aware and better informed.
3. Use of information (Data): How to mine credible data and understand the ‘story’ it is telling us.
4. Personalisation meets Specialisation: The need to offer consumers choice with indoor and outdoor training options and the lack of specialist training routes for outdoor specialists.
Opportunities around these themes included the need to create credibility as an industry to help to facilitate change via organisations such as CIMSPA, as well as looking at the bigger picture to seek solutions and using intuitive programming with a recommended ‘playlist’ based on previous ‘purchases’.
Nigel Wallace, Client Services Director at Lifetime Training, commented: “The Fitness Directors’ Summit is an opportunity for top operators to unravel themselves from the daily minutiae. It provides a platform to discuss, formulate, reflect and then return to their businesses to disseminate key trends and themes which will directly influence their businesses making them, and the industry, stronger and more fit for purpose in the future. Our theme for 2015 of ‘Naked Fitness’ focussed on the essence of what we offer our customers. What, as operators, makes us authentic to our brand, and how do we achieve clarity of proposition by focussing upon the elements that really add value. Essentially, ‘stripping down’ to simplify our key issues and concerns to their simplest possible components to identify what makes a real difference incrementally.”
The Fitness Directors’ Summit 2015 was followed by a review at Leisure Industry Week at the NEC in Birmingham on Tuesday 22nd September.
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Editor’s notes:
Lifetime Training is one of the UK’s largest vocational training providers. Established in 1995, it now delivers innovative training programmes to more than 20,000 people a year. More than 250 Lifetime trainers and tutors work directly with learners at over 3,000 workplaces and educational centres in order to deliver on both educational and business needs. Lifetime Training is the 2014 Flame Awards Supplier of the Year.
www.lifetimetraining.co.uk
For further information contact:
Amanda Baker at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 07976 757499
Email: amanda@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk
