Fitness Hut co-founder and CEO Nick Coutts was honoured with the 2013 IHRSA European Club Leadership Award at the association’s 13th Annual European Congress in Madrid.

Coutts - whose Portugal-based budget gym operator opened its first Lisbon site in late 2011 - received the award from the chair of IHRSA’s board of directors Brent Darden.

In presenting the award, Darden noted that Coutts had worked his way up in the industry, starting as a gym instructor to eventually overseeing the operations of 30 clubs for Holmes Place Iberia.

“Most recently, in the height of the recession, he bet big on our industry by founding Fitness Hut with two business partners - a premium low-cost fitness option for a population that’s financially stretched by these trying economic times,” said Darden.

After the October event, Coutts said: “It was a real thrill and a privilege for me and my two partners, Andre Groen and JP Carvalho, to have won the award as there were several other worthy candidates.

“I also greatly respect the previous winners of the award and am friends with some of them, so to have been recognised in the same way as these industry leaders is quite something.”