Don't know about you, but gyms and especially pools open too late for my convenience. I'd happily prefer to go swimming/exercise at 5:30am. Why can't these places be 24 hour opening? I reckon they're missing a market by their limited hours
Don't know about you, but gyms and especially pools open too late for my convenience. I'd happily prefer to go swimming/exercise at 5:30am. Why can't these places be 24 hour opening? I reckon they're missing a market by their limited hours
I agree with your point about capital outlay, Brigadier.Swimming is the only formal exercise that I do now, so the shortage of pools / available pool hours in the UK is of direct interest to me.
With regard to RN's point about expense of supervision of swimming time, I doubt that is a real consideration - a 25m pool must cost millions to build and run; the virtual pennies that they would pay a guard to sit in a chair pales in comparison. Plus, any cost would be passed onto the consumer anyway.
I'd guess that it is more likely the capital cost vs revenue / square metre (or similar measure) that puts these private enterprises off building them.
That's my gut feeling, though.
Most of the things you do in a gym, you can do at home. A lot of people join a gym to make a statement.
However, I do agree that keeping fit needs to be interesting if you are to tolerate it on a regular basis. The social element to certain keep fit activities does make staying healthy more attractive.
Sadly, some people only start thinking about keeping in shape when it is too late.
EFCLee1";p="3309999 said:Good for you. However, there are an awful lot of people out there looking for excuses to avoid going to a gym or do keep fit in general. Hence my suggestion that you can actually keep fit at home should you (really) wish to.I built a gym in my back room, spent about 600 quid on several items so I could try do as many movements as possible, I suppose it depends on the individual but for me I was more motivated when in the gym than I was at home
Now I still go the gym of a night and all my equipment is sold on!!
I agree with your point about capital outlay, Brigadier.
But I think the OP was suggesting that once a pool is built, why isn't it open 24/7.
I'm assuming that one person is insufficient to sit in a chair.
I would have thought that taking reasonable breaks, natural breaks, etc, if one is not going to close the pool each time. Then £15 per hour would be the absolute minimal cost for 24 hour opening, say bewteen 2100 hr to 0700 hr, that's £150 for staffing alone, for one night operation.
That's over £1k per week, £50k per year.
Then there's sickness/holiday/days off to consider, NI, training, etc.
It might be pennies compared to the initial cost, but my guess is it's the difference between operating solvency or not. And that's just the pool!
Additionallt, if the pool was open 24/7 there would be a salary bill of something like £1.5K per week for normal opening times. That's about £75k per year without the night openings.
Thanks for the replies. Brigadier, you are right that manchester and bolton municipal pools do open at 6.30, as indeed do private ones. But this would mean that i would be hard pushed to swim for 30 mins and get into work for 7.15, which is my preferred start time. Just that extra 30 mins opening time (at 6am) would make all the difference.
I take the point about staffing costs, but i wonder if any of these companies have considered the overnight market which would be useful for early birds like myself, and especially shift workers.