As the Holiday soon draws to a close, many bigger corporation stores like Macy’s are keeping their doors open for 24 hours a day. This got me thinking about fitness centers which advertise to the public that they are open 24 hours a day. As a fitness junkie who works out everyday, it got me thinking from a financial standpoint, does having a fitness gym open 24 hours a day make financial sense to business owners. I break down the finances through a cost-benefit analysis.
1. Cost: For a fitness center, you have to have a minimum number of staff members present whenever there are customers at your gym. You don’t necessarily have to pay for private trainers to be there at 3am but you will need a staff member scanning people’s gym membership passes at the front exit. You also need 1 or 2 people to clean up towels left on the floor and to clean up the locker room when it gets to be a mess. You also need to have staff on hand to make sure that no one gets hurt using the fitness equipment.
So for argument’s sake, let’s say you will need at least 3 staff members on hand at any given point in time. Of those 3 people, you will need one person to be an assistant manager or high ranking staff member to be in charge in case anything happens. This assistant manager gets paid more than the other staff members who probably get paid minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is about $7.15. If you multiply this figure by 2 staff members you get a total of $14.30. Now remember you also have to factor in the minimum wage of the assistant manager who might get paid around $10 an hour. Thus the total hourly wage for your staff at a given point in time would be $24.30
The monthly totals in extra money that it would cost your gym to stay up 24 hours a day comes to: $5,103.00
the yearly total comes out to: $51,236.00
Just to have a better estimate of the total cost, let’s subtract a certain amount of money to account for days the gym might be partially open like holidays. Being rather generous, let’s say that there are 30 days in which gym hours are shortened. Subtract about $8,000 from the total and you are left with about $43,000 in extra cost it would take to keep your gym open for 24 hours a day.
The benefits of keeping your gym open 24 hours a day would be that it makes it more convenient for your customers to go to the gym whenever they want. It may also attract customers from your competing gyms because you are open 24 hours a day. Now the question you need to ask yourself is: Are you going to get enough new customers to make up a difference of $43,000? This also depends on your yearly membership fees. If a yearly membership is $1,000 then you will need 43 new people.
Personally I don’t think that it is worth keeping the gym open 24 hours a day. If someone wants to go to the gym, they should be able to find time between 6am-11pm. 24 hours a day is simply a luxury that most gym owners don’t believe makes financial sense and I agree.
