Grow Your Boot Camp Business By Teaming Up With Hotels

By Chris Fernandez   |  Comments 13

(Read Time: 15 Minutes)

So I’ve got a small secret to share with you.

For the last 3 months or so, I’ve been heavily involved in a boot camp business franchise that I started with a business partner.

Why?

Because I wanted to get my feet wet and learn more about this particular side of personal training so that I could better serve you and give you some killer tips, tactics and methods specifically for boot camp marketing.

My goal is to start with one boot camp franchise, and then expand all over my local area with many locations (which should be YOUR goal too by the way!) and in the mean time, become a boot camp marketing master to compliment my knowledge of fitness marketing and personal trainer marketing.

I’m still out there collecting data, assessing what does and doesn’t work and refining all of my system and techniques, but today I wanted to pass along an amazing bootcamp marketing tactic that I just thought of and can’t wait to implement because it’s going to explode my business, and it’s going to do the same for yours!

This simple and powerful joint venture strategy is a an absolute fitness marketing gem that I bet you’re NOT doing if you own a boot camp or own your own personal training studio or gym.

In fact, I go into great detail in System 5 and on all my previous coaching calls and various blog posts — and especially in the Million-Dollar Fitness Marketing Mastery Series — about how joint ventures are critical to your success as a personal trainer, especially if you run a boot camp business.

So I wanted to take that notion to a whole new level today and share with you an amazing idea that should be worth literally thousands of dollars to you each and every single month if you do it right.

I’m talking about forming a joint venture with local hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts and other local places where people stay overnight whether for business or pleasure.

The Power of Hotels to Your Boot Camp Business

I’ll explain in a second exactly how this is done and how you should execute this fitness business strategy, but suffice it to say, when I thought this one through and realized how truly powerful it was and that it wouldn’t cost you a DIME in marketing expenses, it’s something that I had to share with you immediately.

So, if your boot camp is located anywhere near a hotel, motel, bed and breakfast or large chain resort that doesn’t have it’s own boot camp or group exercise class, even if they have a gym, then they are ripe for the taking with this powerful joint venture proposal.

The hotel should generally be within 1 mile — and perhaps up to 5 miles — away from your boot camp location because some or most guests, depending on where it is and what type of hotel and market it serves, might not have transportation to get to your boot camp.

But aside from the logistics for the guests, you are going to create a win-win scenario for the owner/manager of the hotel because you will be offering unlimited boot camp workouts for all the guests, and possibly the employees as well, for a small fee that in turn will bring you another stream of steady revenue while delivering amazing value to the hotel, their guests and their employees!

Here’s How You Work the Deal

So here’s what you’re going to do:

You’re going to contact the owner, manager, or CEO  (if it is a small local chain), and offer them a package they can’t refuse.

Tell them that your boot camp class is relatively close and you would like to offer every single guest that stays at their hotel the ability to workout in your boot camp and perhaps their employees as well.

There are several ways that you can market this to the owner or manager of the hotel to make it a win-win for both businesses.

Here’s 3 basic ways to structure the deal:

• Flat monthly fee: In exchange for a flat monthly fee, anyone that stays at that hotel can participate in any of your boot camps at any time, any location (although they will most likely stick to the one nearest them), as many times as they want.

So for instance, say you charge a regular client $197 per month for your boot camp classes, then all you do is charge the hotel $197 a month and any guest can come and workout as often as they want.

This should be adjusted based on the size of the hotel, how many rooms it has, guests that stay there, occupancy rate, etc. You need to work the numbers to make sure that it makes sense for you to even offer this to them, and also makes sense for them to work it in their budget on an ongoing basis.

You have to be fair to the hotel, but also your boot camp business as it wouldn’t be that great of a business arrangement if you get flooded by 100 new people for just $197, so play around with the numbers to make sure it’s a true win-win.

Either way, this is a powerful joint venture that can absolutely explode your fitness business and at the same time offers a great service to that hotel owner.

Think about the power of a deal like this for a second…

First of all, you know as well as I do, most hotel guests will NEVER use this offer and you are likely to never see more than 5-6 people in any one month, which is actually LESS than a single paying boot camp member who might attend 10-12 classes per month!

Second, once the hotel agrees to this arrangement, they are more likely to remain on board because for them, that expense is relatively small in relation to the service they are offering their guests, and because hotels are usually larger businesses, they are more likely to remain on EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer – for recurring billing) for a long period of time since they won’t be looking at their statement like a normal client would every single month asking themselves if they should keep paying because they aren’t using the membership.

Finally, it’s an absolute amazing option for anyone staying at the hotel whether for 1 night or 1 month because now they have access to an awesome boot camp workout for FREE that they can access whenever they want for as long as they stay at the hotel.

Do you think that a guest will appreciate that extra level of service, even if they never use it, and are more likely to stay at that hotel the next time they are in town?

This is an absolute win-win-win for all parties and could be an amazing boost to your boot camp marketing efforts — all for free!

• Flat monthly fee for guests and employees: The next option for this plan is to offer the owner or manager the option to extend the program to everyone associated with the hotel including employees, management and guests.

Because employees are more likely to take the business up on this offer and work out at your boot camp, this plan is obviously more expensive than just the guest option I already listed.

So for example, if you charge one client $197 per month for your regular boot camp, and then you charge the hotel that same amount for their guests to come, you would then increase the rate to extend the offer to their employees depending on how many people they have working for them.

If it is a small staff, then double should be fine.

But if it is a large chain with 500 rooms and a staff of 100 people, then you need to adjust your rates accordingly and charge closer to $997 a month for employees and guests to come and work out, likely much more!

Again, think about how this makes the hotel look good and benefits your fitness business.

You get a nice chunk of super high margin revenue for your boot camp business from just ONE deal without putting in any extra work or time or hiring any extra staff, the employees of the hotel in essence get a “wellness” program for free, the hotel guests get free access to a great workout and exercise program, and the hotel owner gets to sit back and offer this service to all of their guests through all their marketing and welcome packets, and update their website and branding with this special offer that no other hotel has.

• Other joint venture: If the owner or manager doesn’t have the authority to make a deal like this with your boot camp, or they aren’t interested in paying any money for it, you can still make a deal with them.

The final option is to run a true joint venture — where you give them something, and they give you something — and everyone comes out on top.

In fact being flexible with your fitness marketing and boot camp marketing initiatives is the key to building the spokes on your marketing wheel to gain more and more clients for your fitness business.

So in this scenario, there’s a few things that you can do to still enjoy the benefits of the hotel’s traffic and resources.

First, offer the hotel the option to have people come to your boot camp on a one-off basis.

This means that they can still host your advertisements (and even give guests a free gift certificate or flier for you) while not spending any money.

In return you get people coming to your boot camp and you can either charge the hotel on a person-by-person basis (messy), or just charge guests a $10-$20 fee for attending one of your classes (less messy).

Again the hotel looks good by providing the info for this class and service, while you get more clients for your boot camp classes and some might be local enough to want to join your boot camp or tell others about it.

Another option would be that you could offer to run a boot camp class in the hotel’s exercise area if it is big enough, or outdoors (less desirable) for guests that might be interested in exercising and doing a boot camp class while they are staying at the hotel.

This could work the same way as the previous joint venture deal in that you would either charge the hotel for those that attended (less messy) or charge the clients individually that attended (messy).

Obviously this last joint venture idea is nowhere near the beautiful and clean as the recurring cash flow revenue model in the first two, BUT a deal like this could lead to a longer term juicy contract with a chain once you’ve proven your concept and that demand is high enough.

Don’t Forget The Benefits!

I shouldn’t have to say this, but just in case I will.

All of your fitness marketing and boot camp marketing efforts, especially when it comes to joint ventures, should ALWAYS put the other party’s interests first.

In other words, what can you do for THEM to make them look good and help their business, their customers or make their lives easier.

When it comes to hotels, they are always looking for ways to differentiate their services and add more value to guests who come from far away places to relax, get away or are in town on business and would love the convenience of a nice 6 AM boot camp class to start their morning off right!

So when approaching these businesses please bear in mind that if you just come looking for a handout: “Hey, would you like to pay me for my boot camp classes?”, you aren’t going to get very far.

Instead look at if from their perspective:

They are busy, probably looking to actually cut costs, while at the same time raising their value to their guests.

How can you help them do that?

Paying for a fun, motivating and convenient boot camp might be especially valuable for a hotel without a gym in it that could increase their value to their guests without spending the thousands of dollars that it would take to build a gym or hire a trainer.

Research the hotels you contact before you contact them, call them and ask if they have an exercise room and if they do how big is it, ask them if they offer workout classes or wellness programs for their employees, and just make sure you do your due diligence before making a formal proposal or offer, including actually visiting the place a couple of times before you approach management with your proposal.

Please Don’t Steal This Idea…

LOL, I had to write that!

Why?

Cause I know the minute this gets out there, it will be on every fitness marketing, boot camp marketing and fitness business website in the world…

Just remember where you read it first!

Check the date of the post and then see when others have posted their awesome “hotel” joint venture idea.

I’m just kidding actually…if I was worried about someone “stealing” my idea, I wouldn’t have posted it of course.

My real goal is to help YOU if you own a boot camp business to learn a great strategy that you can use TODAY to start making an extra $1,000 – $5,000 a month in beautiful recurring cash flow!

Think about making just 2-3 deals with some local hotels for about $497 each on average.

With just 3 deals you’ll be earning an extra $1,500 a month,  or $18,000 a year, in your boot camp business without doing much work at all, and the amount of people that your classes gets from these deals might be very inconsequential.

Special Insider Info?

You’ve probably noticed the special “Insider” section on my website.

Well, this section is something that I’ve been working on for awhile now while trying to get a feel for what I should offer in it.

For instance, information like what I just gave you today is worth something right?

In fact it might be worth multiple thousands of dollars a month to your boot camp or personal training business.

And what if I gave you the proposals that you could use to make a deal or the legal documents to secure the contract with these hotels?

What about a script for when you call the hotels on the phone, or what to say in an initial and follow-up meeting with the manager or owner?

Would that help you out? Would it be useful to you?

The reason I am asking is because the “Insider” section is yet to go live as I am struggling a bit with how much to charge (it would be a monthly recurring program) and what sort of information to put in this section that cannot be found anywhere else on my website or other websites.

Don’t worry though, if you have already purchased System 5, you’ll get complete access to all of this information for at least 3 months if not more so I’ve got you covered there.

But what I wanted to do was offer a lower cost solution to those that might not be able to afford System 5, or the monthly cost of the Inner Circle, or the Million-Dollar Fitness Marketing Mastery Series.

So, in the comments section below, I would love if you could do me a favor and tell me your thoughts on all of this.

Tell me specifically:

• What sort of information you would expect in a special “Insider” section on my blog and
• How much you think that information is worth to you on a monthly basis

What I will do as a special “thank you” is select 10-20 responders randomly when the “Insider” section is ready to launch, and give you a free membership for 3 months just for taking your time to write me your thoughts.

Boot Camp Business Marketing

So, there you have it.

A quick way to grow your boot camp business through some shrewd fitness marketing and joint venture deal making that won’t cost you a dime to execute but could be worth thousands of dollars for your boot camp business!

I hope that you got a lot out of this special boot camp marketing post as I’ll be posting this type of stuff more frequently as I get my own boot camp franchise ramped up and start perfecting more fitness marketing, boot camp marketing and overall fitness business initiatives to help you out whether you own your own personal training studio, train clients one-on-one or run a boot camp.

Don’t forget to leave me your comments below letting me know:

• What sort of fitness marketing information you expect in a special “Insider” section on my blog and
• How much you think that information is worth to you on a monthly basis

Oh, and real quick, come back to this post once you’ve done a deal or two and let me know what results you have gotten from using this technique and what did and didn’t work for you.

February 16, 2010