AusLeisure

Newly released market intelligence from ActiveXchange market intelligence shows that COVID-19 has changed the game when it comes to retention, with members of aquatic, fitness and recreation facilities cancelling after significantly less ‘non-attendance’ in 2021 than in the past.

With ActiveXchange’s ecosystem safely and securely compiling millions of data records, cleaning and streamlining the information, then ‘washing’ it against additional data and predictive models and algorithms, to create tangible insights to create a confident ‘what next’ mindset, the data on cancellations suggests that cancellations are being driven by financial, access and choice reasons.

The trend also suggests that operators need to have a clear engagement strategy to keep all the members they have worked so hard to find and may need to consider questions such as now they manage peak time capacity, if they are running program that members engaged and active, and whether member communications support behaviour change when needed.

Other new ActiveXchange insights cover member returns in Australia’s southern states, with South Australia setting the pace for members visiting facilities in the post COVID environment while Victoria is still heavily affected by the return from its significant lock-down period in late 2020.

Commenting on these trends, ActiveXchange Chief Executive, James Ellender says “operators needs to look deeper at the types of customers coming back - and not coming back - and have an agile approach to programs, complimentary services and what gaps they have in servicing these customers.”

Ellender is also encouraged that while overall facility membership number are significantly down year-on-year, member activity levels are stabilising to pre-COVID levels, explaining “this is a positive as it creates an opportunity to engage your loyal - and active - members and create a referral network of raving fans.

“It also means that ActiveXchange’s pre-COVID retention algorithm is now relative again to our partner’s customer patterns and will pick up those who are not on the correct curve to re-establishing regular visit habits.”

With the continued unknowns and resulting financial pressures across Australia and New Zealand, ActiveXchange’s SportsEye insights are quickly becoming venue and facility operators sounding boards - generating insight on a rolling basis from hundreds of thousands of memberships across hundreds of private, not-for-profit and local government run venues.

Ellender adds “each account aligns this insight to each venue’s local context, and ultimately assists those who are connected into the network to decide – what do I do next to make the most of my team’s time and resources to make people, more active, more often and ultimately improve the health and wellbeing of people across Australia and New Zealand?

“SportsEye also informs stakeholders that operators are on the right path by creating visibility of performance by benchmarking and projecting future performance alongside the Network, giving wider confidence that as a sector we are rebounding and making better decisions together.”

Looking ahead, Ellender says “due to the increasing pressures and continued uncertainty of COVID, doing nothing is no longer a viable or responsible approach for any organisation.

“Any organisation committed to getting more members, more active, more often and creating a clear line of sight on where to focus their resources, should consider their mindset to unlocking their data.”

Click here to contact ActiveXchange via their entry in the Australasian Leisure Management Supplier Directory.

Images: ActiveXchange's latest information on membership decline (middle) and the ActiveXchange dashboard (below).

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