Beyond points and perks: What loyalty really means in fitness

What should loyalty reward when your customer is trying to build a healthier life?

Imagine two members of the same fitness club.

One visits six times a week, completes every challenge and regularly purchases additional services. The other comes twice a week. They rarely participate in promotions, but have been consistent for two years, built friendships with fellow members and are making steady progress towards their personal goals.

Which is more loyal?

Most loyalty programmes would find the first member easier to reward. Visits, purchases and transactions are easy to measure. But do they really tell us who values their membership more, or whose relationship with the club is stronger?

The point isn't that the second member is more loyal. It's that a single measure cannot capture two different, but potentially equally valuable, relationships.

Fitness presents an interesting challenge to traditional loyalty thinking for two reasons. First, the behaviours we tend to associate with loyalty, such as attending regularly and taking part in activities, are rewarding in themselves. They help members feel stronger, manage stress, build confidence or find enjoyment in exercise.

Second, this isn't simply a transactional relationship. Members aren't just buying access to equipment, classes or facilities. They're investing in themselves, and success looks different for everyone. For one member, it might mean reaching a fitness milestone. For another, it might mean establishing a routine that works around the demands of everyday life.

If participation alone is rewarding, and its value depends on what each member is trying to achieve, loyalty needs to be about more than rewarding activity. It also needs to consider the operator's side of the relationship: how the club supports those goals and makes membership worthwhile. So rather than asking how do we reward the behaviours of loyalty? operators should ask: how do we make this a relationship worth staying in?

Because loyalty works both ways.

Members invest time, effort and money. They work towards their goals, recommend the club to others and often contribute to the experience of those around them. In return, they should feel that their commitment is recognised, their goals matter and their membership continues to offer something genuinely valuable. That value isn't always financial, and it certainly can't be measured solely by the number of times someone walks through the door.

The value members create together

There's a significant difference between having access to a fitness facility and feeling that you belong somewhere.

Think about the instructor who remembers your name, the familiar faces at your Wednesday morning class or the person who encourages you through the final few minutes of a difficult session. Over time, these small interactions build relationships. The club becomes more than somewhere to exercise. It becomes a place where people feel recognised, supported and connected.

Research gives us reason to take this seriously, without assuming that community automatically creates loyalty. A 2026 systematic review of 21group fitness studies found perceived capability, social relationships and instructor behaviours to support better attendance. Essentially supporting that sustainable exercise habits are not simply about motivation or enjoyment. They're also about confidence, relationships and the environment in which exercise happens. ABCFitness reported in 2025 that 57% of surveyed consumers cited social interaction and connection as the main reasons they joined a fitness community. For some members, community isn't simply an additional benefit. It's part of the reason they return. But creating community takes more than organising activities. A running club, charity challenge, family activity day or wellbeing event can bring people together beyond their normal exercise routines. These experiences can extend the value of membership into members' wider lives, creating opportunities for friendships, shared achievements and connections with the local community. Yet putting an event in the calendar doesn't automatically create belonging. What matters is what happens between people, during the event and afterwards.

Members themselves play an important role in creating that value. The person who welcomes someone new, encourages a fellow member or brings a group together for a weekend run contributes to the experience of others, even if that contribution never appears in the club's commercial measures.

Should loyalty recognise what members contribute to the community, not just what they consume from it?

This is an important distinction. Members aren't simply recipients of a service. Through their relationships, participation and encouragement of others, they can help shape the experience that makes the club worth belonging to. Of course, not everyone wants their fitness experience to be social. For some, an uninterrupted hour with their headphones is exactly what they value. Building community should create opportunities for connection, not impose a particular definition of participation. The opportunity is to give members different ways to find value and feel part of something, on their own terms.

Making personal progress visible

If community creates opportunities for connection, digital technology can help recognise the individual journeys and contributions that sit within it. Imagine a member who sets a goal to exercise twice a week. Rather than encouraging them to attend as often as possible, their digital experience recognises the routine they've chosen, celebrates their consistency and helps them see how far they've come. The same could apply to someone trying a new activity, returning after a difficult few months or participating in a community challenge. These can be meaningful moments in a member's journey, even when they don't immediately generate additional spend. Gamification has potential here, provided it supports the member's goals rather than simply the operator's desire for more activity.

Streaks, badges and leaderboards can motivate some people, but they can also turn exercise into another source of pressure. Someone consistently achieving their twice-weekly goal shouldn't feel less successful than someone attending every day. And when life interrupts that routine, a supportive welcome back may be more valuable than a notification about a lost streak. Research grounded in self-determination theory highlights the importance of feeling capable/recognising our own progress, enjoying the activity itself and feeling like what we do really matters is key in developing sustainable exercise habits.

This raises a broader challenge. Operators shouldn't allow the data that's easiest to capture to determine what they value most. Visits, bookings and purchases matter, but they don't represent the whole relationship.

Digital recognition makes progress visible. Human connection gives it meaning.

There's a difference between receiving a notification that you've completed your fiftieth class and having your instructor acknowledge that achievement when you arrive. Or between earning a digital badge for a community challenge and celebrating a collective achievement with the people who took part. The real opportunity is to connect individual recognition with shared experiences, allowing digital and physical interactions to reinforce one another. Getting this right also requires trust. Personalisation should feel helpful, not intrusive. Members need to understand what information is being used, why it's needed and what value they receive in return. Recognition should be welcome, not an unexpected disclosure of someone's personal goals or circumstances.

How does the organisation earn loyalty?

Which brings us back to the two-way relationship. What does the member actually get in return? Points and discounts have their place, but meaningful value can take many forms. It might be access to an experience they wouldn't otherwise have, recognition of a milestone, help towards a personal goal, an opportunity to learn something new or simply feeling known and appreciated by the people at their club. For others, the value might be the community itself: friendships, shared achievements and experiences they wouldn't otherwise have had. The point isn't to replace tangible rewards with digital badges and good intentions. Nor is it enough to repackage ordinary parts of a membership as loyalty benefits. The value has to be relevant, credible and genuinely felt by the member. A weekly streak notification might recognise activity, but does it make the member feel recognised? An exclusive event might sound like a benefit, but is it something members genuinely value? And if we invite members to engage more, share information or take part in additional activities, we should be able to answer a simple question: what makes that extra commitment worthwhile for them? That question is also the starting point for the commercial case: how might creating value for members translate into value for the operator? Members who feel supported, make progress, develop relationships and continue to see value in their membership may have stronger reasons to stay. For operators, that creates opportunities to strengthen retention, advocacy, participation and lifetime value.

But these outcomes shouldn't be assumed. Operators need to understand whether loyalty initiatives genuinely strengthen member relationships and deliver incremental commercial value, rather than simply generating more programme activity and cost. That means looking beyond visits, points redeemed and additional purchases. Personal progress, satisfaction, belonging and trust can provide a richer picture of the member relationship, alongside retention, advocacy and additional spend.

A relationship the whole organisation must deliver.

A loyalty scheme can be designed by a marketing or digital team. A genuinely loyal member relationship has to be delivered by the whole organisation. An app might recognise an achievement, but an instructor brings it to life. Data might indicate that a member is disengaging, but the response determines whether they feel supported or targeted by another campaign. A community event might be planned centrally, but it's the club teams and members who turn it into an experience worth attending. Delivering this consistently requires more than a loyalty platform or a set of rewards. It means connecting the member experience across club operations, people, digital journeys, community initiatives and commercial priorities, with clear ownership of the relationship from end to end.

Ultimately, the opportunity isn't simply to create more sophisticated ways of encouraging members to visit more often, spend more or complete another challenge. It's to build a relationship that recognises what each member is trying to achieve, values what they contribute and creates experiences and communities worth being part of. One where members feel that their loyalty is recognised and the organisation earns that loyalty in return. Perhaps the most important question in fitness loyalty isn't what should we reward members for? It's what are we doing to earn their loyalty in the first place?

‍How is your organisation earning its members’ loyalty? To explore how you can recognise personal progress, nurture community and bring the whole organisation together to build relationships worth staying in, get in touch with Anna Stefanaki and Rachel Kealy.