iDEA - Switched on kids
For budget-conscious facilities looking to expand their customer base, virtual classes are still a largely untapped market, particularly in the children and families segment. Classes can be run with little investment, with a facilitator rather than an instructor, and most importantly, can get less sporty kids moving in a fun way
While rising obesity rates and declining physical activity levels represent a huge challenge for government, the problem also presents a great opportunity for leisure providers to become more involved in the public health agenda and deliver potentially life-changing results.
The spotlight has more recently shone on childhood inactivity in particular. There’s a generation at risk of longer-term health problems due to sedentary lifestyles, often compounded by the over-use of technology. ukactive’s recent Generation Inactive report, for instance, showed that only 50 per cent of the UK’s seven-year-olds are meeting current activity guidelines of an hour a day.
But rather than point the finger at ‘culprits’ like computers, iPads and PlayStations, more enlightened leisure facilities are starting to embrace the popularity of technology to attract more children and families into their facilities.
Virtual classes, which are becoming established among adults at many clubs and leisure facilities, have the potential to impact on children’s programming too.
Children’s activity specialist Chris Sharman, who heads up the iKidz Training and Consultancy, is currently developing exciting new content for a virtual kids class product, called iDEA, to be launched (see interview, right) at Leisure Industry Week 2015.
As someone who started out as a lifeguard, rising through the ranks of both public and private leisure operations, becoming head of family activities for the Esporta chain, Sharman is well aware of the challenges of catering to this segment of the market.
He says: “One of the biggest challenges providers face is finding the right people to deliver a variety of kids programmes, and to do it consistently well. It’s never been a well paid activity, earnings are commonly close to the minimum wage, so you’ll often find that instructors quickly move on to teach aerobics or PT where they can earn upwards of £25 an hour.
“So there’s a huge gap in instructor availability, which makes programming extremely difficult. Class cancellations are common due to the reliance on such a small pool of people for just a couple of hours each day, and many classes never get off the ground because clubs don’t attract the numbers to make running them economically viable.”
By contrast, he says, virtual classes require no specialist instructor, simply a facilitator to run the technology (any internet-enabled device and a screen) and guide the participants enthusiastically as they follow simple instructions on the screen. Clubs and centres have more flexibility to run these classes anywhere – perhaps in a studio, a conference room or even an old squash court – depending upon the weekly demand.
Sharman continues: “Participating in a virtual kids class should be as easy as watching a YouTube video and following along. Done correctly and timetabled intelligently, I think virtual classes can be a game changer for the children’s market.”
There is no need to send your instructors off on special training courses the moment a new type of class comes out. They simply need to be versed in the content being screened, and any member of staff could fill this role. This alone could save a centre thousands of pounds each year in training fees.”
Sharman adds: “There have also been studies done on club retention, which show that families who exercise together have far great rates of retention than those who don’t.”
So it really makes good business sense, he says, to attract families to your facility. While waiting for their kids, parents might be encouraged to try a work out for themselves, or spend more time and money in the catering areas.
“For leisure facilities that are already doing children’s programming well, virtual classes can grow their business rather than replace current content.
“If kids are visiting twice a week for football and swimming, a virtual class could tempt them to come a third time.
“For those sites who struggle with family content, virtual classes could offer a great kick start to attracting this market, at very little investment and ongoing cost.”
The new virtual offer that Sharman is working on – called iDEA – will bring a host of new activities for kids, from magic and card tricks, to martial arts and army bootcamp, and he feels that it’s really important that classes should appeal to all children’s tastes.
“Many kids today are not at all sporty, so operators should draw them in with other fun offers, like juggling, that don’t require any physical fitness or even special equipment, to be enjoyed. “It’s essential to engage kids physically, socially and mentally, because their long term wellbeing is dependent on all these needs being nurtured and developed,” he says.
“In doing so, facilities can make a valuable contribution to the health and social agenda, raise their profile in the community, increase their revenues and diversify their business at the same time.”
MD and co-founder Jane Maguire and creative director and co-founder Ben O’Hara on the launch of iDEA, their new virtual class concept for kids
What’s the idea behind iDEA?
It’s about using the latest technology to help people reconnect to family values. Through virtual classes, we wanted to reignite those retro playground activities that mums and dads and grandparents could relate to, but that would also engage today’s kids. Our virtual yet traditional concepts include Hula Hooping and Jump Rope, which are now quite current urban sports.
Some of our first concepts were developed for holiday park operator Haven, and were a storming success. The parks saw a massive increase in attendance to these activities and, instead of parents simply dropping their kids off at the club for the day, they were staying to participate, along with grandparents, uncles and aunts.
What are your backgrounds?
We both have around 20 years of experience in the fields of leisure and entertainment having worked for large organisations such as The Tussauds Group and the Thomas Cook Group. We founded The Business Creative in 2010, and specialise in creating and producing world-class entertainment experiences. iDEA is our new virtual class product for the kids and family market and we’re so excited to be launching it at LIW this month.
How have you developed the virtual class content?
When we did our research, we felt that some of the offerings for kids were limited and not very current. We’ve listened to what kids and families really want and iDEA will present content that’s exciting, engaging and on trend.
For instance we’ve been working with Liam Richards from Britain’s Got Talent on our martial arts offering, and with the latest street dance stars.
We’ll launch with seven offers that will range from magic tricks to tutting (a kind of dance using intricate hand movements, currently being used by Taylor Swift on her new video), but we’ll be filming and adding new content on a regular basis and can be very reactive to what activities are trending and what kids ‘experts’ are in the news.
How flexible is the content?
It’s totally flexible, depending on whether it’s a school, leisure centre, health club or holiday park using it. A park might want a 45 minute session, whereas a school might want to break the content up into 15 minutes segments to teach as lessons over three days. A lot of our content has been developed in line with the National Curriculum, but the emphasis is always on fun.
Facilities can get really creative with the content and our specialists will help them do that. A health club might want to offer our circus skills class as a series leading to a certification, for example.
We’ve ensured that classes can be run with little or very low cost equipment, and facilities simply pay a subscription fee of £48 per month.
What’s the future for iDEA?
There are so many possibilities. Currently there are three virtual channels, Activate for 5-11 year-olds, Together for families and Zest that can involve the more mature market, either alone or with the kids. In the future we also plan to develop concepts targeted at teens and pre-schoolers and some of the content could even be adapted for use in care homes.
Underpinning all our content will be the aim of not only getting people active physically, but mentally and socially as well.
Case Studies - Holiday club fun
Jamie Thomson
Entertainments experience manager, Bourne Leisure
I’ve turned to Jane Maguire and Ben O’Hara (founders of iDEA) to develop virtual kids class content at both my current position with Butlin’s, and also my previous role with Haven. Both times what they’ve put together has proved a huge success.
This is particularly so with Butlin’s kids clubs at our three resorts, where we’ve been focusing on creating their own identity. In my role I’ve been able to see that being able to offer kids exciting classes like Yoyo or Diablo has greatly increased the kids clubs’ credibility and popularity.
We also noticed that instead of simply dropping off their kids at the club for the day, parents and extended families will start to join in. Classes were often full with around 40-50 people, and when run four times a week for 40 weeks at all our parks, that’s a lot of people we’ve interacted with.
Another great bonus of the virtual classes is the ability to put them on anywhere at short notice. So when the British summer weather inevitably takes a turn for the worse, and the indoor activities become crowded, we can instantly put on more classes, virtually at the flick of a switch!
Case Studies - Attracting families
Mark McMahon
GM, Village Hotel, Farnborough
We have a large fitness facility, with around 3,000 members in addition to hotel guests. Because of our business park location, a lot of our members are from the corporate sector visiting through the week.
Our weekends can be quite quiet and that’s why I started to look at what we could do to attract the family market. When I came across the iDEA virtual classes it looked liked the perfect concept to try.
We’ll be starting a pilot at the club within the next few months, offering all seven activity programmes and seeing how it is received. The classes could easily appeal to both our regular members and families staying at the hotel on weekends and holidays.
With increased competition from the budget sector, we must find ways to increase revenues by offering greater value for money and innovative programming.
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