Return on Investment: Why your fitness club needs a 24/7 gym access control system

When people think of investments, for many their mind would first go to the stock markets, property or gold. These types of investments can grow your wealth through appreciating in value or by generating income through the likes of dividends or rent payments. There are also investments that can increase your wealth through another means – by reducing your outgoing expenses. This includes making purchases such as solar panels to generate power and cut your power bill, switching over to electric vehicles to reduce fuel costs, or adding insulation to your building to reduce heating expenses.

As you can see, other than the item you purchase appreciating in value, you can either accumulate wealth from investments through them increasing income (such as dividends or rent received) or decreasing your expenses (reducing bills or other costs). In general, most investments only offer the benefit of either one of these directions of cashflow - i.e. they only generate income, or they only reduce your expenses. For the gym industry, you can actually invest a relatively small amount of money into a piece of hardware which not only can increase the revenue of your business, but also reduce your ongoing expenses as well. This piece of hardware is a 24/7 gym access control system.

A gym access control system is a piece of equipment that connects with doors or certain resources within your club. Used to control access to your facility, specific rooms within the club, or specialty items such as tanning beds by connecting their entry points with a gatekeeper which then relays information back to your computer. Utilizing an access control system designed specifically for the fitness industry allows your door system to sync seamlessly with your gym management software, which is the brains of the operation, automating and streamlining the process of granting members access, checking them in and tracking their visitation to your facility. The benefit of this direct communication between your gym software system and the gatekeeper controlling your gym doors is two-fold, cutting the staff hours required for administrative tasks while increasing the appeal of your club to potential members and improving your chances of getting more gym members.

Reducing Costs

An integrated access control system can control who gets into your club, and when through the ability to set a specific combination of rules that grant members door access. For example, you can set specific opening hours for your club, opt to keep your doors open 24/7, or instead choose to only allow out of hours access to members with a particular type of membership. The system can also restrict access based upon the level of debt a member has, for example you might use this to keep members who owe you money out of the facility outside of your opening hours, and only allow them access should they turn up during staffed hours.

These systems are also secure, only allowing access to those who have a key tag, or who have your gym member app – the new version of the GymMaster access control system can be accessed through Bluetooth, so members logged in can use their phone as a key if they are logged in if they have permissions to do so. Tailgating detection is also available to detect and deter members from granting access to your facility to non-members with their own key tags. This eliminates the need for staff to man the front desk, freeing you and your team from unnecessary administration so you can spend more time doing what you love – and saving on your staffing costs.

Increasing Income

If you have a gym access system, this means you no longer need to worry about keeping staff on the door at all times. As such, you can increase your opening hours without any additional staffing costs – making your club more suited to a wider audience of potential gym-goers. People have busy schedules and are often required to workout at a range of times to accommodate their work, family, or social lives. Using a gym access control system to turn your club into a 24/7 operation is an asset to your business as it can make your club more accommodating to these differing workout schedules and therefore make your club more appealing – resulting in a higher number of members and subsequently, membership fees.

Your club can also generate an income through the resale of access control key cards or key fobs that are given to members upon sign up, or offer them for free initially–but charge a replacement fee to discourage members from losing them in the future. If you so choose, you can even get these custom branded to your business - emblazoning them with your logo.

Click here to learn more about becoming a 24-hour gym, and where you can get your own gym access control system.