As we look at life around us in 2015, one issue that is everywhere is a concern and goal to have a healthy lifestyle. We see it in the food we eat and how it is prepared. We see it in everyday life with less smoking, less hard drinking, better food choices and pursuit of healthy recreation that keeps the body as active as the brain in our high tech world. Who would have thought that Whole Foods could sell groceries at a premium just because they were grown organically? How many predicted consumers’ desire to pay trainers to direct their exercise or to purchase tech devices to record their daily steps? Today, society values health, feeling good and living longer. Such is the world we live in. Such is the world clubs must serve.
Private clubs started to recognize this new emphasis on health about 15 to 20 years ago when a few progressive country clubs like Boca West added their first fitness facility. Yes, there were the doubters on the fitness trend, and believe it or not, there are still many top clubs in North America whose old guard members still disdain a fitness facility. However, as Bob Dylan said, “The times are a-changing.” Modern clubs that promote health and wellness lifestyles are attracting the next generation of members as well as retaining the older members who have found the closest thing to a fountain of youth.
The clubs of yesteryear—where members ate too much, drank too much and smoked too much—are quickly fading into history. Now, the whole fabric of club offerings is being viewed through the lens of a healthy lifestyle philosophy. Is this just another fad or trend? Probably not, since the results from healthy living are so rewarding and enjoyable.
HEALTHY LIVING IS UNIFYING CLUB OFFERINGS
When seen through the perspective of promoting good health and very enjoyable lifestyles, clubs are integrating all activities to achieve a common health goal. The trend started when clubs began adding fitness equipment in small increments, sometimes just one treadmill in each locker room, just a way to stick a toe into the fitness water. Next came limited programming and small, coed fitness facilities with five or more machines and some free weights. From a facility targeted to the “35 and younger crowd,” clubs continued enhancing and promoting fitness and wellness by adding group activity studios and doubling and tripling cardio exercise areas. Today good fitness facilities are uniformly popular to all age groups with younger and older members rating fitness uniformly important.
The health and wellness culture is affecting all club offerings. Clubs are providing year-round recreation opportunities for the seasonal sports of golf, swim and tennis, and adapted to make them much more health friendly. For golf, a renewed emphasis on walking is getting so popular some clubs have even tried to levy a walking fee to make up for the loss of cart revenue. Swimming programs have been expanded into water aerobics and water polo teams, and tennis has been expanded into less strenuous racquet games that keep members active well into their golden years, such as paddle tennis, pickleball and introductory versions of tennis for children—as well as adding cardio tennis to pump up conditioning for the sport.
Fitness is being offered in many new ways to improve members’ ability in all sports. The emphasis today is not just to build a facility, but also to offer the programs and professional staff to properly run them. Year-round activities attract members and their families to the club all year long. Golfers in northern climates play paddle tennis in the winter. Hiking trails provide year-round use for members of all ages. Indoor and outdoor golf practice facilities help golfers improve their game during the offseason via year-round coaching and access to high-tech performance tracking equipment. Culinary programs offer delicious foods that are actually good for you. And don’t forget that feeling good and enjoying life at the club is also a life extender—happy people live longer and better.
Progressive clubs with health and wellness offerings in southern locations like Club Pelican Bay in Naples, Fla., are adding both fitness and spa in their new clubhouse facilities. Boca West and Desert Highlands in Scottsdale are providing every conceivable health and wellness offering in truly outstanding facilities and with truly outstanding staff. And yet it is still surprising to find many good clubs ignoring what is happening in the ever-changing world in which we live. One North Carolina club board continues its “golf only” mission of spending everything for golf and leaving dining, pool, tennis and fitness to languish. Soon a new Lifetime Fitness facility will open a half-mile down the road. By the time this club wakes up to the reality that increasingly members are seeking more than just golf, it may be too late.
THE WELLNESS CLUB OF THE FUTURE
The wellness-oriented club of the future will be the traditional country club, the city athletic club and the urban country club without a golf course; but it will have a wellness goal in its mission. The key ingredients for such clubs are unified in a wellness philosophy for all offerings, and they include:
- Providing delicious, healthy food.
- Providing year-round recreation offerings with facilities and programs for fitness and training.
- Providing a wide array of recreation that might include golf practice facilities, tennis (indoor and outdoor), paddle tennis, winter sports in Northern climates, pickleball, bocce, croquet, team sports facilities for children (supported by gymnasiums and outdoor fields), expanded racquets programs like for squash, indoor and outdoor swimming pools that promote aquatic fitness programs and swim teams, activities for the older crowd (card playing, lectures—yes, the mind is important to cultivate for health), and finally physical therapy programs that can be operated through partnerships with local hospitals or medical groups.
As noted above, there is great potential for clubs to break out of their old shells and to embrace the health and wellness that is all around. Clubs that have done this are prospering. Clubs proposing such changes are finding ready acceptance from existing members and are attracting new members. Let’s get private clubs back into the main stream of society. The health and wellness theme is one of the best ways to do it. If clubs become the center of each person’s life again, the membership issues of the past will disappear—but only if club boards listen to all their members and professional staff.
Let’s follow the leaders—including some of leading clubs embracing health and wellness today presented throughout this issue of Club Trends.
Clubs Leading the Way to Wellness
Denver Country Club with 800+ members, offering full service country club and city club amenities year-round with a strong health and wellness program for all ages. Special features of the program include a full-time dietitian on staff, special weight loss and control programs, full-time youth director developing programs, expanding recreation offerings to include paddle tennis, pickleball and bocce, new programs for family golf/promotion of walking golf and extensive fitness/training and conditioning programs.
John’s Island Club with its 1,370 members in Vero Beach, Florida, offering an extensive health and wellness program with fitness, spa, massage and physical therapy services. Innovative wellness offerings include Spa Week with a fitness emphasis, beach yoga, Warrior Dash (inclusive of running/obstacle course/swim/sand crawl) and dietary emphasis on healthy dining.
Wellesley Country Club with its 720 members in the Boston suburb offering a year-round health and wellness emphasis with its fitness facility serving more than 1,000 members, indoor and outdoor tennis, indoor and outdoor golf practice facilities, development of new six-hole family short golf course and coordination of healthy dietary offerings.
Club Trends Spring 2016