INTERVIEW DEAN KOWARSKI
“Ours is a sector that genuinely has the power to tangibly change people’s lives for the better”
spa offering, with facilities such as traditional and infrared saunas, cold plunge and spa pools. We’re also beginning to explore additional medical and longevity services. We have a dedicated food and beverage business within Virgin Active, too, having acquired the Kauai health food café business three years ago. Launched in UK clubs so far [interview conducted April ], these aren’t simply food spaces inside our gyms – they’re proper restaurant environments with expert teams. Around the restaurants, we have lounge areas, co-working spaces and bookable meeting rooms.
Importantly, though, we’re not losing sight of the core product: exercise remains a key part of wellness and we’re investing in enhancing and evolving our tness offering. The biggest shift is in the balance of our gym oors towards strength and conditioning; our Lift Clubs are very popular and, interestingly, predominantly female, with longevity a key focus. But of course, you don’t become a social wellness club just by upgrading your physical facilities. You also have to change the mindset in your team, from being gym operators to becoming hospitality providers. That’s a big shift and it requires new approaches to recruitment, new skills and new training. We talk a lot about ‘unreasonable hospitality’: going beyond operational excellence to create a genuine emotional connection with our members, focusing on how the delivery of our product makes them feel. This is where we need to be, anticipating needs and going beyond expectations.
Where clubs have already been upgraded – Mayfair and Chiswick Riverside, for example – these areas are all absolutely buzzing.
How do you retro t all this into an existing estate?
Our clubs are large format, typically ,–, sq m, which gives us exibility. In some cases, we’re repurposing underused space, taking back salons previously leased to third parties or reducing back-of-house areas to bring teams closer to members. We’re also rebalancing space within the gym, reducing cardio and creating more room for strength, studios and social areas. So fundamentally, it’s about using space more intelligently, but we are expanding where possible. For example, we’ve taken two additional oors at Canary Riverside, which will re-open in Q with a whole new co-working and social environment. We’ve been actively working on this upgrade project for around months, but it’s really accelerated in . There was a period when the UK estate was underinvested and had drifted towards the middle of the market, which isn’t where we want to be. Our
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2026
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