The Rise of The Fitness-Driven Hotel

Developed for Hotel Executive – now shared here on RLAGlobal.com.
Reprinted from the Hotel Business Review with permission from: Hotel Executive.

Written by Simon Lee Saunders, VP of Strategic Health & Wellness at RLA Global,

The luxury segment of hospitality is undergoing a structural shift as: wellness evolve from peripheral spa services and amenities into a core element of the hotel experience. A new generation of performance-focused hotels have emerged, which differentiate themselves by responding to the fast-increasing demand from travelers who prioritize physical performance, recovery, sleep quality and nutrition while awa  from home.

The transformation has been strongly influenced by the evolution of luxury health club models into several distinct categories over the past two decades. Another impact has been the blurring of boundaries between hotel, club and fitness center, underlined by the entry of luxury fitness club brands into hospitality and hotel brands adapting their overall identity to fitness and wellness, also offering memberships to non-hotel guests.

What Guests Want and Why It Matters

To better understand what is behind the rise of fitness-driven hospitality, we should first look at recent key changes in customer expectations.
Wellness has become a daily practice for many customers, who are moving away from occasional spa treats or once-in-a-while pampering to personalized everyday routines. This is especially true for the Millennials and Gen Z cohorts.

Most health-conscious travelers no longer accept that their trips interrupt or break their daily training, sleep or nutrition routines; this has been a paint point for many. Also, guests increasingly want to improve their performance while on holiday or a business trip, and many travel specifically to try new fitness practices that they can use at home later. Travelers also love the promise that their hotel can provide a supportive stimulus for starting a new training regime.

Guests appreciate a wide selection of hotel features and services when it comes to the cycle of fitness, recovery, nutrition and sleep. They tend to expect superb training environments with various programming, effective coaching and outstanding equipment on par with premium fitness clubs. Also in demand are recovery facilities that provide massages and various other treatments, blackout and circadian lighting for better sleep and "performance-first" dietary options.

Why all this matters to owners and operators is quite easy to see. The global wellness tourism market in general expanded to $894 billion in 2024, up from the pre-pandemic level of $655 billion in 2019, and is projected to grow by a compound annual rate of 9.1% until 2029, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Wellness travellers consistently outspend traditional travellers, and younger generations are more likely to travel for wellness retreats. In fact, wellness retreats and boutique fitness classes stand out in terms of expected spending in the next 12 months, with net purchase intent for these offerings standing as high as at 30% across age groups, McKinsey said in a 2025 study.

Wellness can support ADR premium, stronger occupancy in shoulder periods, and higher TRevPAR. Luxury hotels with extensive wellness services and amenities can command substantial premiums compared to similar properties in the upper upscale segment. Hotels with a less pronounced wellness proposition can outperform bigger competitors in profitability, and have strong returns without capital-intensive wellness operations.

What It Takes to Be Fitness-Driven

Hotels seeking to tap into fitness-driven growth need to consider several operational implications. The following are some of the essential and most frequently recommended behind-the-scenes and front-of-house adjustments that are necessary for this change.

Space planning is mission-critical, as you are no longer designing a spa and gym as amenities, but a performance platform with training zones that can operate as a boutique studio, recovery circuits with clinical-grade privacy and hygiene discipline, sleeping environments that have appropriate architectural features, such as acoustics or lighting.

Programming should become the true operating system of the property, because a fitness-driven hotel can be successful only if it offers seamless booking and has an outstanding calendar quality for classes, coaches, progressive programmes and events. This is an entirely different competence compared to traditional soa menu management.

Labour models must also be adjusted, partially because of the need for more specialist roles, such as fitness talent, recovery practitioners, or nutrition coaches. Special attention should be paid to peak load management issues, including class capacities, treatment-room yields or time- slot optimization. If you allow external guests or add membership schemes, you should introduce club-style staffing rhythms and service recovery processes.

Access control policies must be implemented, along with appropriate scheduling, if hotels guests and members share facilities. In this case, you'll need to introduce capacity rules for peak periods, guest expectation management (if the customer can train anytime or in actual club hours) as well as zoning practices to prevent high traffic from disturbing peace and quiet.

F&B re-engineering is another key adjustment, as nutrition doesn't mean just a healthy dish on the menu. You should offer macro-transparent food options, early and late service for training schedules, recovery hydration and low- and no-alcohol programmes, and align culinary identity with the performance promise.

Data and tech use adaptation can help provide a frictionless guest experience, which is a prerequisite of premium services. These tools should allow hotels to collect information about customer preferences, such as performance goals or training preferences, for pre-arrival profiling, integrated booking for classes, personal training or recovery sessions as well as post-stay follow-ups.

Human interaction should be further encouraged, as it is still one of the most important means to improve guest experience, particularly for inexperienced exercisers or less tech-savvy guests and aligns with the luxury hotel experience. Personal training and small group training with friendly guidance and meaningful interaction can be invaluable in assisting the guest in their wellness journey.

Risk and compliance rules must be updated as service modalities can raise consent and contraindication protocols, staff training and certification requirements, hygiene and HSE standards and sometimes, depending on the market, medical-adjacent regulatory considerations. The compliance with brand standards should be also reviewed.

Identity in the "Clubification" Era

Retaining property identity for fitness-driven hotels can be a challenge. Do you shut the door on guests for whom fitness is not a priority or is there an element of fitness by association? Is this a luxury health club with a hotel or a luxury hotel with a health club? The lines between hotels, clubs and fitness centers are becoming less and less distinct, partially because of the recent foray of some of the luxury club brands into hospitality.

Health and fitness clubs have evolved into four archetypical groups: urban performance clubs (Equinox, Third Space), athletic country clubs (Life Time, David Lloyd), longevity or medical wellness clubs (Lanserhof) and social wellness clubs (Remedy Place, Surrenne). Some have their own hotel operations (Equinox) or luxury residences (Life Time), while others offer accommodation in partnership with unrelated hotels nearby. (Surrenne).

Business travelers and leisure guests on a city break increasingly expect club-level fitness and recovery on demand, which reportedly pushes hotels to develop suitable platforms for these services. This trend significantly contributes to what is increasingly known as the "clubification" of hospitality - a phenomenon that may intensify in the future.

Guest Vs Member Differentiation

Fitness-driven properties catering to both hotel guests and external members should consider the perception of their offerings, and whether they are seen as a luxury hotel with a local membership layering or a health club with members within a luxury hotel.

The two major operators that approach this market from opposing sides are Equinox Hotels, which expanded into hospitality from the luxury health club scene, and SIRO of Kerzner International that integrated comprehensive fitness and wellness into the hotel guest experience.
Facilities at Equinox or SIRO are a step up from traditional four- or five-star hotel gym amenities, and are more comparable with the best full-service health clubs. One of the main differences between their market approaches is the guest and member differentiation, and how it typically affects actual access to services.

Hotel guest becomes a member (Equinox-style playbook): Equinox grants hotel guests full "member-like" access to the Equinox Club during their stay. Access rules can be tightly controlled, with certain facilities, such as club pools, potentially restricted to members or hotel guests, while some Spa services may be open to the public.

Hotel-first with local membership layering (SIRO-style playbook): SIRO markets the hotel stay as the core product, but it also supports memberships and class packages as a local utilisation engine, with typically offering various benefits like discounts on recovery, nutrition consultation, retail products, and occasional room-rate perks.

Both of these playbooks can be effective and can be considered good signals. Equinox demonstrates the power of a club ecosystem, in which the hotel can benefit from the credibility of a premium fitness club brand and deliver immediate market differentiation through club access. SIRO, on the other hand, uses a performance concept more rooted in the hotel environment across fitness, recovery and sleep, and has the potential to operate a membership system as well to further increase utilisation and revenue.

Other selective guest vs member differentiation concepts focus on public day-pass monetization, and provide day access to specific facilities, such as club areas, to manage demand and drive revenue, while keeping the brand premium.

But the real differentiation lever isn't just who can enter. It also lies in priority booking, peak-period rules, member pricing compared to guest inclusions and whether the property is optimized for members and guests or guests only.

Conclusion

Owners and operators should recognize that fitness-driven hospitality is more than just another short-lived trend that quickly fades away. When executed effectively, it can deliver higher room rates, stronger guest loyalty and increased non-room revenue, among others, meaningfully contributing to overall asset performance.

Keys to success in this area include implementing necessary operational modifications, carefully evaluating strategies regarding property identity and selecting appropriate ways to differentiate between guests and members to maximize value.

Simon Lee Saunders serves as RLA Global's VP of Strategic Health & Wellness. His experience has been crafted through both professional and personal well-being experiences that distinguish his ability to connect with the most diverse projects.