Keeping up appearances

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Health club at Le Royal Méridien Beach Resort & Spa in Dubai, supplied by Raymond Sport.

How some simple layout changes and an awareness of the latest design trends can make your fitness facility both look better and cost less.

It's time for the region's health club industry to sit up and take notice of global trends and developments in health club design. With industry experts in the Middle East admitting that the sector is behind most other markets - including the US, Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand -  in terms of gym design, no longer is it acceptable to have rows of equipment crammed into small spaces with dark carpets, bright lights, basic TV screens and inadequate changing facilities. This defeats the health club operator's primary aim - to create a pleasant work out environment for their members.

A well-designed club, which should both look good and assist operations, is not just the responsibility of the club owner or operator, however. A working relationship between architects, specialist health club designers and consultants, interior designers, fitness equipment suppliers and the club management is required, and crucially this needs to be established from the outset of a project.

This will be even more important in the future with international chains like Fitness First and Virgin Active raising the bar in the region, and fresh approaches at new hotels such as Atlantis, The Palm and InterContinental Dubai Festival City starting to redress the balance.

Leisure Manager met with representatives from each stage of the design process to understand their unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities associated with health club design.

It seems that with the right partnerships, the current trend for unimaginative, often dysfunctional design, can be reversed - without breaking the bank.

Work with experts

Whether launching a new health club or undertaking a refurbishment, the first priority should be to ensure that your architect has operational knowledge of fitness facilities.

If they do not, it is important to have a consultant or specialist designer on board in the early stages to prevent fundamental layout mistakes and avoid issues when it comes to equipment installation.

For this reason it's also good to have your fitness supplier involved too. Although suppliers may not be independent, warns Raymond Sport LLC managing partner Raymond Kelly, they should be able to contribute valuable knowledge of product storage fit out and operation.

"Involve the suppliers, but let a specialist health club consultant decide if he is comfortable with the supplier," advises Kelly.

"In this market in the past all clients have wanted to save consultants' fees and so they have patched together lots of conflicting view points, meaning the project offers only a fraction of the returns," he adds.

"Work with people who have the demonstrated expertise you desire and don't expect this to be without cost," says Kelly.

The region's major suppliers, including Raymond Sport, Technogym Emirates LLC, Al Kamda General Training LLC and Deltatrade Est, offer a range of design services for clients to draw upon, such as 3D overviews of the facilities, foot flow analysis, access control, signage recommendation and pre-opening fit-out. In each case, the service is maximised when the supplier is involved in the project at the early stages.

"It is important for fitness suppliers to be involved at the start of the design stage to ensure proper optimisation and allocation of floor space. It also helps to ensure that power points are arranged as per lay out design at convenient locations to make the work out environment more user-friendly," says Andy Dick, senior vice president for business development at Al Kamda.

For a higher level of design support, Body & Soul Health Clubs, which operates five family gyms in Dubai, offers a design consulting service through its team of in-house designers.

"We ensure that from a functional perspective, the layout and operational flow meets the demands of the users and offers the best possible experience," says Body & Soul general manager Rohun Bevan.

"We have worked with many interior design and architectural firms in the Middle East and many do not have experience of operational functionality - that is where we can often positively impact a layout."

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