What are the Benefits of a Gym Towel Service?

Everyone loves clean and fluffy towels! And gym goers go through their fair share of towels and washes. Offering fresh and clean towels at your gym or fitness studio shows your members that you care about health, safety, hygiene, and a positive customer experience. But, as a gym owner, towels cost money to buy and money to clean. What is the cost-benefit analysis here?

Most big-box fitness centers don’t offer free towel service, and there is a reason: cost. With their emphasis on profit, it doesn’t make sense for these types of facilities to buy towels, launder them, keep track of them, and spend staff time collecting and distributing them.

Not providing gym towels could lead to lower standards of cleanliness, accidents on the floor, and decreased attendance if gym-goers forget to bring their own. If you are a boutique gym trying to create value to attract customers, offering gym towel service is a great place to start. But, at what cost?

Here are several benefits to offering a towel service for your members!

Gym Hygiene and Cleanliness

Many prospective members consider a studio’s cleanliness before purchasing a membership. This includes restrooms, towels, locker rooms, and other parts of your facility.

Towels are used to wipe members, equipment, and even floors and mats. By providing gym towels, you get to control the level of cleanliness. You have no control over the condition and sanitization of towels members bring from home.

It’s not uncommon for gym-goers to have one go-to towel they keep in their gym bag and use multiple times with infrequent washes. This is a playground for bacteria, germs, and fungi which could be transferred right back to the shared equipment.

Providing towels you have confidence have been freshly and properly launders can reduce the exposure of guests and equipment to unknown pathogens.

Gyms and studios that have a successful towel program either charge extra for towel use or figure the costs for towels and laundry into membership fees and their operating budget. Gym hygiene and cleanliness are worth paying a little extra for as a customer if you can message it correctly.

Sustainable and Environmentally Friendly

You may be thinking that disposable sanitizing wipes or paper towels would do the trick and don’t require washing. These both still contribute to landfill waste and cost precious resources to produce for a single-use. And you may see an increase in garbage runs and paper towel litter throughout your facility.

Reusable and regularly laundered towels can be dropped in a hamper and out of view where they’re collected for frequent treatment and washes. Bulk-washing gym towels is also more efficient than home washes by reducing both water and electricity. You can also choose more environmentally-friendly detergents and stain removers.

Going green and offering sustainable solutions is appealing to a large demographic and would recommend your facility over other, less responsible studios. But, it comes at a cost. Before offering towel service at your fitness center, consider not only the cost of buying/replacing towels but also the cost of laundry, laundry supplies, and staff time.

Better Customer Experience

Humans are forgetful! If they don’t remember their home towel, or it never got washed, they may attend classes less often. Lower attendance means they don’t get the results they want to see which may lead them to cancel their membership.

If they don’t have to remember their gym towel, you remove one more excuse not to attend classes or get their workout in. By providing clean, fresh towels via a transparent, sustainable system, you show that you support their goals and their personal health and hygiene.

Maintain a clean environment by supplying clean, high-quality towels in ready supply for your guests. Toss out any threadbare, ripped, frayed, or stubbornly stained towels right away to further advance your cleanliness standards.

If you offer towels to members, one of the biggest challenges is keeping track of them. Whether members intentionally walk off with them or simply forget they have them, towels are lost in large numbers every month at almost every fitness center that offers them. Try setting up inventory counts by bundles or by weight.

To help better track inventory, it is common for gyms to hold keys, driver’s licenses, or gym cards as a means of a “deposit hold” for gym towels until they are returned.

Take Care Of Your Gym Members and Attract New Ones!

Have your gym or fitness studio towels washed, treated, folded, and delivered by the team at The Folde! With our premium commercial service, you can skip laundry day and keep your focus on your customers.