Creating an exceptional member experience is crucial for any fitness business, which is why multi-brand studios have their work cut out for them.
Maintaining a unified member experience becomes more complex (and even more crucial) when you’re managing multiple fitness concepts under one roof.
Case in point: Members joining you for yoga shouldn’t have to use a different booking app to attend Pilates. The same applies to payment and class booking; all aspects of account management should live in one place.
Multi-brand businesses that master the member experience see higher retention rates, increased referrals, and stronger revenue growth. Those who struggle with fragmented service often fight member churn and brand confusion, which hurts their bottom line.
The solution lies in building systems that support your staff while creating consistency for your members. In this article, we’ll discuss how your fitness business can leverage software to create a consistent member experience—regardless of which brand your members engage with.
TL;DR: Multi-brand studios have more moving parts than single-concept businesses, which means the right technology becomes essential for creating staff cohesion and operational efficiencies behind the scenes. When your systems work smarter, not harder, it’s easier for your staff to focus on delivering a consistent member experience. |
Table of Contents
- Why the Member Experience is the Heart of Your Studio’s Success
- Top Challenges for Multi-Brand Fitness Studios
- Staff Onboarding and Training: Building a Foundation of Consistency
- Staff Retention and Culture-Building
- The Role of Gym HR Automation
- FAQs: The Member Experience in Multi-Brand Studios
- Level-Up Your Multi-Brand Studio with ABC Glofox
Why the Member Experience is the Heart of Your Studio’s Success
As a multi-brand operator, your member experience directly impacts the three areas that determine long-term success: retention, referrals, and revenue growth.
Retention is where real money lives. Acquiring a new customer costs 5x more than retaining an existing one. Creating a positive member experience—one where your members feel truly valued at every touchpoint with your brand—encourages them to stick around longer.
Referrals fuel organic growth. Happy members are your most powerful (and “free”) marketing channel. Your studio benefits from the trust and credibility that comes with personal recommendations every single time someone feels compelled to tell their friends and family about the positive experience they’ve had with your business.
Revenue grows through expansion. Members who feel connected to your brand try additional fitness concepts, upgrade their memberships, and invest in add-on services (like personal training or nutrition coaching). This trend creates exponential opportunities in multi-brand environments.
That being said, one poor experience can impact how members perceive all your offerings. A poor interaction at the front desk for spin has the potential to damage trust in your entire fitness ecosystem.
📝 Read More: Member Experience – The Ultimate Guide
Top Challenges for Multi-Brand Fitness Studios
Multi-brand studios come with built-in challenges that can negatively impact your member experience. The following are some of the biggest culprits:
Challenge #1 – Confusion around brand identities
Each fitness concept needs its own personality and approach. Nonetheless, because your members interact with all your brands simultaneously, there’s the expectation of seamlessness between the brands.
Members will feel the disconnect immediately if your yoga instructor doesn’t know cycling schedules or if your front desk staff can’t answer questions about your recovery packages.
Again, this can create frustration that spreads across your entire ecosystem.
📝 Check Out: How to Build an Online Brand for Your Fitness Business
Challenge #2 – Inconsistent service standards
Each brand might have different check-in processes, booking systems, and communication styles. But what may feel like brand differentiation to you could feel like inefficiency or clunkiness to your members.
The truth is, your members don’t want to learn three different ways to book classes, or have to remember separate apps for each service in your studio. Disconnected systems introduce too much friction, which in turn can lead to higher churn rates.
Challenge #3 – Disconnect between staff and technology
Your team members need to be crystal clear on policies and protocols across every brand.
Unfortunately, many operators start with different management systems for each brand, thinking it maintains a helpful separation.
Nonetheless, different systems create data silos, reporting headaches, and force staff to juggle multiple platforms throughout their day.
As a result, staff may miss valuable opportunities to cross-sell across multiple brands, because how can they if they can’t track member engagement across the business? Disconnected systems also make it difficult to accurately assess the actual lifetime value of your members, which in turn can provide an inaccurate picture of the health of your business.
📝 Read More: How ABC Glofox Helps to Grow Your Business
Staff Onboarding and Training: Building a Foundation of Consistency
Your staff are the face of your members’ experience with your business. Standardized onboarding and training lay the foundation for a successful multi-brand experience.
Remember when you could train one person and know they’d deliver consistent service? This experience is no longer possible when you’re managing multiple brands with different requirements, class formats, and member expectations.
Here’s where to start:
Comprehensive brand education
New staff need to understand not just their primary role, but how all your brands work together.
This might look like training your spin instructors on Pilates basics so they can answer member questions intelligently. Or equipping front desk teams with knowledge about class formats, pricing, and booking procedures across all brands.
This isn’t about making everyone an expert in everything. It’s about giving them enough knowledge to help members navigate your entire ecosystem without confusion or frustration.
Standardized service protocols
Why reinvent the wheel with each brand if you don’t have to? Create clear guidelines for how to interact with members that work across your brands while respecting each brand’s personality. This might include:
- Greeting procedures
- Steps for problem resolution
- Communication standards
- Payment processing
- Safety protocols
Standardized procedures that every team member follows eliminate inconsistencies that could damage trust or create confusion.
📝 Read More: How ABC Glofox Keeps Your Fitness Staff Motivated
Cross-training and mentorship
Staff who understand multiple aspects of your multi-brand studio provide better member support.
Pair new hires with experienced team members who live and breathe your standards for the member experience. This creates consistency in how new staff learn to interact with members and helps maintain company culture as your organization grows.
Regular refresher training keeps standards high. One strategy is to host monthly team meetings where your staff can share success stories and you can regularly address service inconsistencies. These training sessions provide a great opportunity to introduce new procedures based on feedback you receive from your members.
📝 Read More: Gym Expansion – A Complete Guide
The Customer
Engagement Playbook
for Your Fitness
Business
Discover more Staff Retention and Culture-Building
The unfortunate reality is that high staff turnover disrupts a consistent member experience. Therefore, multi-brand studios need retention strategies that create a workplace culture where your team members feel valued and motivated to deliver exceptional service.
→ Build a unified culture that transcends individual brands.
While each fitness concept has its own vibe, your underlying values and commitment to member success should be consistent. Create a culture where staff see themselves as part of something bigger than one brand.
Members notice when your staff are genuinely invested in the entire business, not only one specific area.
→ Provide clear career advancement opportunities spanning your brands.
Staff want to see a future with your organization. Consider how a front desk team member might advance into a position as studio manager, allowing them to oversee operations across multiple brands. allowing them to oversee operations across multiple brands. Or how an instructor might develop expertise in several modalities, which increases their value and earning potential. Be open to your team’s input and suggestions.
→ Offer competitive compensation and benefits.
Retaining quality staff requires competitive total compensation. You might consider offering performance bonuses tied to member retention metrics or satisfaction scores. Additional benefits, such as free memberships across all brands, continuing education opportunities, and flexible scheduling, demonstrate your commitment to their success.
→ Foster communication across brands.
Create systems for your staff to share insights and best practices between fitness concepts. For instance, your cycling instructors might have motivation techniques that benefit strength training classes.
Regular inter-brand communication builds relationships and improves service quality.
📝 Check Out: Business Expansion at Scale – A Strategic Guide for Multi-Location Fitness Operators
The Role of Gym HR Automation
HR automation transforms how multi-brand studios manage their most valuable asset—their people. By streamlining administrative tasks, automation frees your team to focus on delivering exceptional member experiences.
Think about all the time you spend on manual HR tasks. Scheduling conflicts, payroll calculations, performance reviews. Now multiply that across multiple brands and locations.
It’s overwhelming, and it takes focus away from what really matters: your members.
Automated onboarding and scheduling
Automation guides new staff through standardized checklists, eliminating the need for managers to remember and check every step. Automated onboarding might include completing paperwork, accessing training materials, understanding protocols, and setting up system access. Every new team member receives the same comprehensive introduction.
Automated systems make complex scheduling across different classes, instructor needs, and member demand patterns much more manageable. These tools optimize coverage, prevent double-booking, and ensure adequate staffing.
Payroll management
Managing payroll across multiple brands with varying pay structures, commission rates, and bonus programs can become complicated quickly. Automation ensures accurate calculations, proper tax handling, and timely payments while generating cost reports across your entire business.
Performance tracking and communication
Automated systems track key performance indicators, such as member satisfaction scores, class attendance rates, and sales performance, across multiple brands. This data helps identify top performers, provide targeted coaching, and make informed decisions about promotions.
Important updates about schedule changes, new policies, or member feedback get automatically distributed to relevant staff. Consistent information sharing across brands reduces communication gaps that can disrupt the member experience.
📝 Read More: Why User-Friendly Software is the Secret to Scaling Your Fitness Studio
The time savings from HR automation are substantial, but the real value lies in the consistency and reliability it brings to your operation. Your staff can focus entirely on creating positive member experiences when they’re not bogged down by tedious administrative tasks.
FAQs: The Member Experience in Multi-Brand Studios
What is a multi-brand fitness studio?
A multi-brand fitness studio houses several different health and fitness concepts under one roof or management structure. This might look like “wellness collectives” that house yoga, cycling, and strength training brands, or companies managing multiple boutique fitness concepts or franchises across different locations. Each brand maintains its unique identity while sharing operational resources and enjoying lower startup costs.
What is an example of multibranding in fitness?
One example is a fitness company operating separate yoga, Pilates, and cycling studios within the same facility (also known as a “collective” model). Each brand has its own instructors and service schedules, but members can access multiple brands with one membership. Another example is a management company running different boutique fitness franchises across various locations while maintaining each brand’s distinct identity.
How do multi-brand fitness studios improve member experience?
Multi-brand studios can improve the member experience by offering variety, convenience, and value. One example is giving members the ability to try different service offerings, such as HIIT or spin, without them having to switch gym memberships. When managed effectively, these studios provide consistent service quality across brands, including centralized booking, payment, and account management options.
What fitness studio tech tools create a seamless member experience?
The right software makes all the difference. ABC Glofox solves the biggest headache for multi-brand operators: keeping everything connected.
Instead of juggling separate systems for each brand, you get one platform that handles bookings, payments, and member accounts across all your fitness concepts. Your members use one app to book yoga, cycling, or strength training, which eliminates confusion about which system to use for what.
Our Brand Control Panel keeps your messaging consistent while letting each brand maintain its personality. Plus, automated scheduling means you’ll never accidentally double-book instructors or leave classes understaffed again.
The bottom line? Your members get a smooth experience, and your team stops wasting time on manual workarounds.
Level-Up Your Multi-Brand Studio with ABC Glofox
The most successful multi-brand studios deliver unified experiences that make members feel valued across every interaction.
ABC Glofox provides the technology infrastructure that supports brand differentiation while ensuring operational consistency. We help multi-brand studios deliver premium fitness and wellness experiences—from centralized member management and class scheduling to staff management and internal communication.
Ready to transform your multi-brand fitness studio? Book a demo today to see how ABC Glofox can help unlock operational efficiencies within your business!