Director of Rooms, Lagos Continental Hotel, Cuthberga Onuoha, speaks about how the Techno Gym, a state-of-the-art fitness and wellness centre, helps in-house guests and outsiders to maintain their lifestyle, promote sports tourism. Charles Ajunwa brings excerpts
Can you tell us what the Lagos Continental Fitness and Wellness Centre is all about?
Lagos Continental Fitness and Wellness Centre is a new life and new experience for our guests. Everybody now feels that it’s very important for them to take care of themselves. And fitness and wellness have become very essential to every traveller. At Lagos Continental, we are striving to make sure that fitness goals are met while they are here. This is in line with our vision of promoting sports tourism. Our gym is well equipped with Techno Gym, essentially, they are the world’s best providers of equipment when it comes to fitness and wellness. All our gym equipment are brand new and we imported all of them from Techno Gym. Currently, we have professionals that are well-equipped in terms of knowledge and experience to guide and train all our guests to meet their goals. We also try to create tailor-made fitness goals to meet the individual needs.
We have opened up our gym and wellness to non-resident guests as well. So we are not restricting our gym access to only our guests staying with us. We have become a one-stop fitness centre especially for people around. Now you have to queue to become a member of Lagos Continental Fitness Centre. That is because we go the extra mile, not just to provide equipment for people to train, but we provide the platform for them to be catered for while they are here. So in a nutshell, fitness has become essential to Lagos Continental guests, both those staying with us and those that are from outside.
What’s the motive for having this fitness centre?
We’ve always had fitness and wellness as part of our journey, but now we are more intentional about it. But what we intend to achieve is to ensure that guests don’t stop their lifestyle when they are here with us. So we are creating a platform for them to continue their normal lifestyle. It makes it comfortable for them, and then they choose us to come back over and over again. If I’m a gym person and I come to Lagos Continental, will I have to stop those three days of not going to the gym? No. You will have a well-equipped gym that you will continue. And most times, that means we keep them longer here, because anyone that walks into our gym says, oh wow, I’ve never seen this machine. You have the best machines here. So yes, our motive is to make sure that guests don’t stop their lifestyle.
What do you do when guests are here to ensure they become part of the gym centre?
From the beginning of our check-in, the gym is introduced to every guest. We try to sell that to them and make sure that they know they have access to it. Then we try to organise activities once in a while, and then broadcast it to our guests, especially those that are in-house, to let them know on a weekend, on a Saturday, come to the fifth floor. We are having aerobics open to everybody. And we have people that respond to that. So that is one of our main communications with them. As I said earlier, the gym is a lifestyle and we work with the top world-class fitness equipment companies. You have different formats. We have a group cycle format now. So it’s a totally different training you work with in groups going around. You have virtual trainers on the machines you go through, and you can actually code yourself. You’re being programmed with it. So your virtual training is yours. In our industry, we have the best coaches and instructors. You have to go high-tech and you have to stay personal. It’s very important you have a sound mind, be fit, and be happy. As a matter of fact, fitness gives you mental health, relaxation health, professional health, and whatever you want to do in your sports life.
Considering the flow of guests on a daily basis, do you have any plans for the expansion of the fitness centre?
Yes, there’s always a plan for expansions in the business. But currently what we try to do now is to arrange timing for guests. We know that most people like coming to the gym in the mornings and late in the evenings.
What about during the afternoon? We have people that can arrange their time according to different periods of the day. We create programmes that will attract them to come into the gym during a less busy period to avoid crowdedness and other periods. Yes, we have extension programmes in the future. Because of the demand, we are also in our fitness centre to enlarge the space. Besides having a continuum of the art fitness equipment, we’re looking into other areas. You need to go into more spinning classes, or any other developments which are popular. So tech is there, it will happen, but that’s a long term plan.
Knowing the gym is always overbooked, how do you then track your members?
Yes, we are always overbooked. But in terms of tracking members, for the guests in-house, every member needs to be registered to be able to have access to go into the gym and we can track who is eligible to use the gym. For guests in-house it’s complimentary, but for outside guests, they pay. So for the in-house guests, that is easier for us to track because they’re already registered into the system at the point of check-in.
What’s the number of people that access the gym?
Out of our occupancy, we can look at about 15 to 20 per cent of them going to the gym.
But when we have groups, we try to create programmes for our in-house groups that also include aerobics in the mornings for them.
What has been the impact of the fitness centre on external guests?
For the external guests, that has been overwhelming. Overwhelming because currently, the range is between 200 to 250 outside guests that use the gym on a monthly basis. Many future champions are being groomed and nurtured here. I promise, very soon members of the Lagos Continental Fitness and Wellness Centre will start to win laurels for Nigeria.
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