Yahoo Finance PSA: You can officially rent out your unused gym membership
How many of you have a gym membership but only use it a couple of times a week? Or maybe even a few times a month? Either way, with the cost of living in the dire state that it is, chances are you resent paying out for something that you don’t seem to be getting much use out of. I do.
In fact, recent research found that Britons have wasted up to £4 billion a year on unused gym memberships, and some of my friends are considering pulling the plug entirely and switching back to home workouts, but you needn’t. New app Athlo gives you the chance to rent out your gym membership when you’re not using it. A bit like AirBnB, for fitness rather than travel.
It's entirely free to download, and members can earn between 60 to 90% of their membership fee back, when rented out, providing that the gym you’re a member at is an ‘Athlo partner’.
At the moment, this includes some of the best gyms in London, including F45, MoreYoga, Sweat and The Manor.
If you’re already a member at any of these, not only can you rent your membership out, you can access all other gyms at membership cost (i.e. the price at which the seller bought their membership/class pack for), rather than paying the one-off fee you’d have to if you were to just turn up. It’s genius.
Those who aren’t a member at an Athlo partner can still buy temporary memberships and one-off classes from sellers, but will be charged a premium. This is to encourage Athlo users to join a partnered gym, and/or to encourage the user’s gym to become an Athlo partner.
Matthew Mansell, the founder of the app, says: ‘You might be an avid gym member who goes to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but then your membership isn’t in use on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. So you can pre-populate those days to rent for the rest of the year.’
Download the app for free via the App Store or Google Play.
As for what the gyms get out of this, my first thought was that surely this would just cause them agg, but Mansell says it offers them a better chance of retaining customers, while also attracting potential new members.
Alex Nicholl, Director at BXR, can attest to that: ‘Athlo’s offering will help us to further grow our membership numbers and give existing members more freedom to use their membership in a way that suits their lifestyle. From early conversations with the Athlo team we could really see how the platform would add value.’
Right now, the app only lists London gyms, with Mansell adding, ‘We want to focus on the smaller boutiques, which are far more vulnerable to inflation and cost of living than the bigger corporates.’ But Mansell is in talks with bigger gym chains, and has plans to expand internationally so that users can access gyms on holiday or while travelling for work.
The app, truly, couldn’t have come at a better time.
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