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How to be a winner like Rocky Balboa?

How to be a winner like Rocky Balboa?

Earlier this week, I wrote an article for IHRSA called, “Is there a 'secret sauce' for gyms?".

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Top 10 Worst Holiday Promotions for Gyms

Top 10 Worst Holiday Promotions for Gyms

If you loved Top 10 Signs We’d like to See in Gyms (an…

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What can we learn from NASA?

What can we learn from NASA?

As we watched the Space Shuttle Discovery fly by our Motionsoft 5th floor office, almost at eye leve…

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How do I know you care?

How do I know you care?

Why is it that we get hammered with emails we don't care about all day long and yet nothing from our…

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How to judge a book by its cover…

How to judge a book by its cover…

Here is what I find fascinating. A personal size pizza (4 slices) is only about 600 calories.

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Why do gyms fail?

Why do gyms fail?

I talk to a lot of people every week, including myself.

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Asking why is important

Asking why is important

I’m sorry I have to do this.

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The worst things in life…

The worst things in life…

I bet when you decided to work in the health and wellness industry, you only looked at the positives…

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Can you tell me what you are selling?

Can you tell me what you are selling?

Make this year the year you fulfilled your New Year’s Resolution! Come in to get beach body fit fo…

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Some Big Changes

Some Big Changes

This time I mean it. Really mean it. If you keep reading you will learn something.

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What We Can Learn from Other Industries, Part 2

August 4, 2009

This is a regular column in my blog. The idea is that we can learn quite a bit by looking at some of the best practices that other industries have used, that are applicable to the health and wellness industry.

Today we are going to take a closer look at the airline industry and their pricing policies. Specifically I want to take a look at:

  • How they price for seats;
  • And, the a la carte pricing system they have incorporated.

Differences
One thing about the airline industry that is different from the commercial gym market is that the airline industry is an oligopoly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly), an industry dominated by four or five very large players that will often times move in unison. As an example, when one airline announced they would charge for checked luggage, others quickly followed…I am pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case in our industry!

Similarities
But there are a lot of similarities as well (barely written 10 words and already two lists, I am going to break the world record!)

  • A treadmill in one club is the exact same as a treadmill in another club. Similarly a plane ride from Washington to San Diego (the site of the 2010 IHRSA trade show) on United or Southwest or USAir gets you the same result…you get to your destination.
  • Comparing prices online between different gyms or airlines is pretty simple and straightforward. For the cost conscious consumer, they are willing to put up with some inconvenience like driving an extra 5 or 10 minutes to go to a less expensive gym or adding a stop in your flight to make it less expensive (I still don’t understand how adding a stop makes it cheaper but maybe someone on an airline blog can address that…)

So what can we learn from the airlines…
Pricing for seats…I think is very similar to pricing for personal training in that airlines charge more for aisle and emergency row so why don’t we charge more for personal training booked during peak times!!! The 5:30-8:30PM time slots are certainly more in demand.

Interestingly, most clubs already allow different pricing for different trainers, this allows you to take it to the next level, and subscribe to the high demands time slots as well.

The same principle can be applied to classes.

Stay tuned for another entry in the series, at a later time…

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One Response to “What We Can Learn from Other Industries, Part 2”

  1. [...] on the color of your bags! Personally I see this as the next frontier in our industry. I wrote this article last year addressing a similar [...]

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