As Deloitte’s HealthClubBenchmark Survey approaches its second birthday, the company is launching a simpler version of the survey in order to attract more operators to sign up.

Since its foundation in 2005, the HealthClubBenchmark has become established as an integral part of the strategy decisions of some of the branded operators in the UK, with around 500 clubs now contributing data to the survey.

The benchmarked results enable operators to assess their performance at club, regional and brand level and also rank themselves against a predefined competitor group.

Now, following interest from hoteliers and independent operators, Deloitte has developed a new simplified benchmarking survey to run along side the original, full Profitability Survey.

The HealthClubBenchmark Membership Survey will give other operators of health clubs, in both the public and private sector, the opportunity to benefit from this critical benchmarking information. In return for submitting just five membership metrics, operators will receive access to their performance versus the UK average for free.

Neil Burton, manager of HealthClubBenchmark explains the rationale behind developing the new survey: “If you look at the top 10 brands in the UK health club industry, hotel-owned brands make up a significant number of the rankings.

Measuring performance of top line drivers such as new membership sales and total revenue against competitors in the market can give vital context to budget or previous year’s performance and provide the final piece of this complex performance puzzle.

“This gives enormous value to owners and operators in making strategic and tactical decisions that impact the bottom line of their business.”

In addition to tracking their performance against the UK, clubs can benchmark their performance against a selected local competitor group for a small annual fee.

HealthClubBenchmark was initiated back in 2005 by Chris Ayres of Greens Heath and Fitness and Neil Gillis, formerly of Esporta, who approached Deloitte to run the survey. A steering group of eight private operators was set up to discuss the key benchmarks for the sector and how profitability and membership data could be reported on.

Now every month Deloitte’s HealthClubBenchmark Survey tracks the profitability and membership performance of 1.4m members across 500 private health clubs in the UK. With the imminent launch of the simplified survey and planned expansion across Europe, these figures are expected to grow significantly.

Holmes Place Iberia is the first European player to join and is supporting expansion across Spain and Portugal.