Over the 2021 festive period, hospitality and leisure businesses faced new challenges because of the Omicron variant. Chancellor Rishi Sunak responded to pressure from the sector with his Omicron business support package, which allocated around £1bn in support for businesses ‘most impacted’ by the omicron variant. Gyms, pools and leisure centres were not included, and this has left the industry reeling.
Gyms are struggling to pay rent
Our clients who operate gyms tell us that they faced an extremely slow start to the year as people continued to avoid public places and crowds. Restaurants, bars and pubs are obviously affected, but so are gyms. The UK gym industry body, UKactive, said that the decision to exclude the sector from the government funding would “lead to businesses that support the health and wellbeing of communities going to the wall.”
UK gym operators are still having to cover their increasingly unaffordable rents and relationships between large gym chains, independent gyms, gym franchise owners and their landlords are breaking down. With no financial help coming from the government at all, paying the rent is a growing challenge.
Omicron hit gyms hard
Very few restrictions have officially been implemented in recent months, but public behaviour did change nonetheless. For much of December 2021, avoiding crowds and staying away from public spaces became the norm once more. The severity of Omicron wasn’t clear for a number of weeks and millions of people decided to play it safe by staying at home as much as possible.
Come early January, things hadn’t improved much. At a time when people would usually be signing up for the gym and booking fitness classes to complement their New Year health kick, they were isolating, recovering from Covid or, if they hadn’t yet caught Omicron, they were avoiding gyms like the plague!
Then, for more than a month, UK workers were told to work from home where possible. This means that town centre gyms saw their daytime customers disappear almost completely. If people weren’t going to work, then they were no longer doing a gym class during their lunch hour. They stopped using the gym before or after work and were no longer buying their coffee after their workout.
Now, as we enter spring, all restrictions have been removed and many of us are finally feeling confident enough to get our lives back to normal, but the damage has already been done for many gym operators.
Neil Randall, CEO of Anytime Fitness UK told us: “Plan B measures caused a significant drop in both club revenue and footfall, with traditionally busy city centre locations seeing as much as a 70% loss in footfall compared to same-month performance pre-pandemic.”
Summing it up, he explained: “January is always our industry’s busiest month of the year and is a vital springboard to set our clubs up for the rest of the year. However, this was the second year in succession that our industry has been unable to capitalise on this pivotal time of year.”
In light of all this, the notion that gyms and leisure centres are not among the businesses ‘most impacted by Omicron’ is madness. Indeed, Mr Randall, added: “It seems unfathomable that during an ongoing health crisis, the very facilities that pride themselves on improving the health of our population were left at the back of the queue once again.”
Restructuring commercial leases can help ease the burden
What landlords leasing premises to gyms need to understand is the pressure that the pandemic as a whole has put on gym operators’ bottom lines. After months of severe lockdowns, gym buffs turned to home workouts, outdoor exercise, Peloton and online fitness classes. But gyms will regain their appeal as normality returns.
We help our gym operator customers to improve their relationship with their landlords and restructure their commercial lease to make sure it’s sustainable over the long term. We’ve helped gym operators to achieve improved lease terms, reduced rents and even negotiate rent relief.
Our gym customers trust us to help them save money on their commercial leases, which provides some much-needed financial breathing space while the sector recovers.
