It is Sunday evening and you are about to set off on yet another business trip that will see you away from your family and normal routines for three nights.

You researched that the hotel has a health and fitness club and so pack your gym bag. Fast forward the clock to the following Wednesday when you haul your weary body back through your front door, re-acquaint yourself with your family and un-pack.  Guess what?  Yet again, your gym shoes shared no time with your feet.  Why is it that in the intervening three days a miserly thirty minutes was not found to enjoy the pool or walk the beautiful hotel grounds?

It is this ‘good intention' mind-set that has influenced hoteliers to build health and fitness facilities into their offer. What started as installing a cheap home exercise bike into a disused store room has evolved into purpose designed spa and well-being centres such as the new Radisson SAS Farnham Estate Health Spa in Cavan, Ireland costing £7 million and spanning 40,000 (3,700 square metres).  However, here is the quandary.  Some hotel-based health and fitness centres may now compare well with David Lloyd and Holmes Place, yet only 3-5% of hotel guests continue to use them. Building bigger and better has made no impact on hotel usage. 

With so many hotels now offering some form of health and fitness offer, their effectiveness as a ‘booking winner' has been relegated to a mere ‘booking qualifier'.  Picture the call to reservations a few years ago: "…you do have a pool, that's unusual, I'll book" to "you do have a full service health club, I'll consider you". 

Therefore, the best intention of guests does not translate into use and then there is the contentious assumption that leisure facilities influence occupancy and revenue per available room (RevPAR). The final piece of bad news for hoteliers is that the majority of health and fitness centres do not make money, a situation made worse if all property costs are pulled into the profit and loss account.

Welcome to Brio House™

Given this rather bleak picture was the reason why the owners of the 49-room Brio House™ wanted to approach their health and fitness offer in a different and novel way.

From 5 to 50%

Acquired two years ago by the two partners with a background in the music industry, the starting premise was to ensure that a guest's healthy and active lifestyle enjoyed while at home continued during their stay at Brio House™. If running at 100% occupancy, typical industry usage of 5% could mean as little as three guests a day using the leisure facilities.  The challenge was to get this to 50% within twelve months, rising to an eye-watering 85% after three years.  What follows is an account of their ‘Active Theatre'™ initiative. 

Scientifically Grounded

Some of the ideas for their ‘Active Theatre'™ initiative came from the science literature such as the ground-breaking work undertaken by Alertness Solutions, a California-based scientific consulting firm and Hilton Hotels & Resorts in 2003.  The study investigated how travel and hotel stays affect performance caused by a cocktail of sleep deprivation, an over-reliance on caffeine, over-the-counter drugs and alcohol.  The study found a 61% difference in performance tests among exercisers compared to those who chose to just exercise the TV remote control.  Brio House™ used this research as the catalyst for embedding health, exercise and well-being throughout the property.

Brio House™ used this research as the catalyst for embedding health, exercise and well-being throughout the property

Feeding Key Guest Needs

Brio House™ set its mission to meet the following guest needs:

• Curiosity - a quest for knowledge
• Social acceptance – the need to feel included
• Social contact  – the need for companionship
• Physicality – the desire to move and exercise
• Tranquillity – the pursuit of emotional calm

(Duncan  - can lose this list above of needs if graphic is very clear)

Phase 1: Get Moving

The centrepiece for stage one of the ‘Active Theatre'™ initiative was the ‘Brio'™ health and well-being centre.

Health and well-being centre – the start, not the end of the journey

The environmentally-friendly timber-framed ‘Brio'™ health and well-being centre that sits almost unnoticed in the 39-acre grounds is a big success with hotel guests and the 1,240 local members. The way in which it synchronises with the local environment, its energy saving initiatives and use of sustainable materials has recently resulted in Brio House™ winning a David Bellamy Conservation Award. The purpose-designed centre was always seen as the `engine` for the ‘Active Theatre'™ initiative – the beginning of the journey to embed health, exercise and well-being throughout the property. 

Eight staff or ‘Briodores' attentively look after the needs of members and guests. Every effort is made to ensure that hotel guests are integrated and welcomed when using the Brio Centre. There is no hierarchy between club members and hotel guests which can exist elsewhere.  You may have experienced this when walking into a hotel sauna and felt the abrupt stare from long-standing members, leaving you feeling as though you have just arrived un-invited to a birthday party.

Hotel guests all find a note from Matt, the Head Briodore in their room inviting them along to the Brio Centre for a complimentary refreshment and club tour.  Using the FitLinxx physical activity management system means that Dan and his team know a lot about the guests before they have even arrived.  Using a secure remote connection, Dan can access a guest's exercise history. FitLinxx is now installed in many health clubs and performs as an electronic personal trainer, connecting directly to gym equipment. When guests arrive at the Brio Centre they can load up their existing exercise programme and continue as though they were back in their local health club.

Every room has a personal profile of all ‘Briodores' and web-cams allow guests to view the Brio Centre from their bedroom – very useful if you want to check for a free treadmill.

Travel Well ™

Matt also found that simple changes to the information that guests received from Brio House™ began improving usage. Reservations began sending out a 10-page ‘Travel-Well'™ guide giving advice on maintaining a healthy lifestyle when away from home.  The hotel was receiving so many requests for further copies (they assumed for work colleagues and friends) that they now sell them for £2.95. Not much of a revenue stream you may think. However, in the past ten months, they have sold 3,300 copies. Some of the research for the ‘Travel-Well'™ guide led to the introduction of ‘in-room' exercise which has proved particularly popular with female guests. 

Their research found that although 40% of guests were women, they made up only 25% of visits to the Brio Centre and 10%, if the guest was staying alone at the hotel.  Matt decided that if the guests would not come to the club, then the club would come to them.  Initially, five bedrooms were converted into activity rooms fitted with Precor entertainment cycles, Pocket gyms™ which includes rubber hand weights, power bands, Swiss ball, exercise DVD's and stretch mat. The in-room mini-bar was overhauled and now stocks fresh juice, fruit bars, dried fruit and other healthy snacks.  Personal trainers were also available for those guests who appreciated some additional motivation.  The five activity rooms were operating at 100% occupancy after just four months, leading to a further ten rooms being converted. Guests felt the £20 room supplement was worth every penny.

A walk in the park

Most peoples' definition of exercise is ‘pounding the treadmill' or laps in the pool, but the Brio Centre discovered that some guests were more interested in a brisk 30-minute ramble around the 39-acre grounds, before breakfast.  What started as one Briodore and four guests is now a three-time weekly event with up to 35 hotel residents and Brio Centre members. Soon there came additional requests for rambles and jogs throughout the day so technology was brought in to help.

Twenty affordable Garmin global-positioning-system pedometer watches were purchased. These have many pre-set courses (such as the 15-minute freshen-up to a 90-minute lung buster) and guests simply follow the on-screen `bread-crumb` trail to get them safely back to the hotel. Using one of the hotel bikes, guests can now be far more adventurous and all with a ‘never get lost' guarantee.  Many guests end up purchasing the Garmin watches at the end of their stay, as they do not want to take them off – another surprising revenue stream for the hotel. 

Fitness Concierge

Matt has designated one of his Briodore's as the ‘fitness concierge', who is able to respond to an array of guest requests. In the past two weeks, the fitness concierge has been called in to ‘pep-up' conference delegates before afternoon proceedings, run an in-bedroom yoga session, talk to five guests about eating well and purchasing a pair of extra-large swimming trunks for a guest who forgot to pack them. The fitness concierge can also tap into a vast network of well-being therapists who can normally get to Brio House™ within thirty minutes.

Stage 2: Live Well

Encouraging guests to remain active through accessible exercise or re-connecting them with nature was always seen as only a part of the Brio House™ mission. Next up, was tackling food, alcohol consumption and the fact that some guests wanted an experience that was more about nourishing the soul than timed laps in the 17-metre ozone-treated pool.  A hotel stay for many people often leads to a lapse in healthy living. The stress of being away from home, sleep loss, high caffeine intake and business socialising can lead to irregular eating and much higher intake of alcohol and calories in general.   Brio House™ tackled simple things such as the mini-bar first, providing 50% non-alcoholic drinks and replacing chocolate and biscuits with fruit bars.

Guests seeking an afternoon pick-me-up now go to the mini-bar for a few gulps of pure canned oxygen rather than a caffeine-laced Red Bull. Fresh fruit was available 24-hours at no charge.  De-caffeinated tea and coffee was provided in all rooms and featured more prominently on menus. A minimum of one litre of complimentary water was maintained in all rooms. Matt and his team had found that 40% of guests were dehydrated and listless, and making the situation worse by filling up on coffee. There is a commercial imperative behind simple initiatives such as these, as Brio House™ wants guests to be refreshed, alert and ready for business. No hotelier is genuinely serving its guests if they are sending them home in any other condition. 

Personalised menu

Guests staying more than five nights are now offered a personalised menu which allows some of their home-cooked favourites. Much of the menu is sourced locally with an emphasis on seasonality, as the hotel is keen to reduce its food miles (the distance a food travels from field to plate).

The ‘Travel-Well'™ guide had now been transferred to DVD and placed in all 49 rooms. Matt and the other Briodores were now metaphorically in every bedroom gently reminding guests that peak performance came from keeping a watchful eye on diet, rest and exercise and that drinking a late-night double espresso and watching a film into the early hours was probably not the best preparation for the biggest presentation of your life in the morning.

Given that there was already rapour between guests and the Briodores, the DVD did not patronise, but provided timely and friendly advice.  The DVD was free for guests to take home at the end of their stay.

Stage 3: Relax Well ™

Brio House™ was beginning to get rave reviews from clients, but felt that its bedrooms could be improved to become much better places of tranquillity and calm. Its ‘Relax Well' ™ initiative began to look at creating a new kind of room experience to contrast with its activity room. These rooms were more about creating a calm haven where senses could be soothed. Ensuring guests slept as well as when they were at home resulted in new orthopaedic beds, non-allergenic pillows and acoustic blackout blinds to shut out 100% of light and sound.  Televisions were removed and the world's ‘easiest to use alarm clock' was installed to quell guests' anxieties about not receiving a wake-up call and being late for the most important moment of their life. The ‘Travel-Well'™ guide was updated to provide de-stressing and further ‘relax well' advice, working closely with the American Institute of Stress and the Behavioural Institute in Boston.  The hotel commissioned a ‘soothing the senses' audio CD and installed automatic essential oil dispensers to send guests off into a wonderful slumber. Dry floatation tanks filled with salt were installed in five rooms and guests reported great results. Ohio State University has extensively researched floatation beds and found that elite athletes performed better than a control group after just one hour of use. The ‘Relax Well' initiative is continuing with a constant search for new technologies that enhance the guest in-room experience.

A Sustainable Business

You may not be able to visit Brio House™ just yet^[1], but this highly distinctive lifestyle orientated hotel proposition is making an indelible mark with leisure and business travellers. Perhaps this is why lifestyle hotels are out-performing ^[2] general hotels in terms of average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR).  They convey our individualism and desire to be treated as though we were the hotel's most valued guest. Long may they flourish.

Ray Algar, MBA is the Managing Director of Oxygen Consulting, a company that provides compelling strategic insights to organisations serving the global leisure industry.  Ray can be contacted on +44 (0)1273 885 998 or e-mail ray@oxygen-consulting.co.uk.

www.oxygen-consulting.co.uk

^[1] The Brio House™ is a conceptual hotel, and does not exist, at least at the time of writing. However, the technologies profiled are widely available and all companies and research referred to in this article do exist.

^[2] PricewaterhouseCoopers