It may be the most overrated travel amenity: hotel gyms.

Travelers say they want access to a fitness center on the road, but a new study finds few people actually use them.

Of all major amenities, such as in-room internet access and bottled water, hotel gyms had the least amount of actual use, according to research by the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, based in Ithaca, New York.

Cost of Amenities Justified?

The study looked at whether offering various amenities justified the expense in providing them, both for the initial traveler’s visit and for repeat business.

Internet access “held the greatest attraction for first-time guests” no matter if they were traveling for business or pleasure, the study found. Although it also concluded that while 66% of guests said they expected to use wifi in their room, only 42% of guests actually logged on.

For returning guests, complimentary bottled water “offered the highest ROI [return on investment].”

Room price was “the next strongest factor,” followed by location and loyalty program membership, the study said.

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Low ROI for Hotel Gyms

But researchers also discovered, perhaps counterintuitively, that “guests greatly overestimated the likelihood that they would use the hotels’ amenities,” including the gym.

The team concluded “this amenity appears to offer a low ROI.”

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While 46% of guests—nearly half—said they expected to use the fitness center, fewer than a quarter, 22%, actually did.

This reality, the authors wrote, is that the “high expense and low use of fitness centers, for instance, may be motivating the trend for hotels to develop access agreements with fitness centers located near the hotel, outsourcing their fitness centers, or offering in-room fitness equipment on demand, rather than installing in-house fitness centers.”

“From a practical perspective, this finding underscores the importance of observing guests’ actual use of amenities before deciding to make them standard rather than relying only on surveys of guests’ desire for and intent to use the amenities,” the study declares.

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The Study’s Methodology

The study looked at four dozen amenities in the hotel’s common areas, individual rooms, and the bathroom for six upscale and luxury brands, with particular focus on bottled water, internet access, and fitness center use—all popular complimentary amenities.

An unidentified global hotel company provided the data from 33 of its properties across six brands in the United States. The brands were classified as: Upscale 1, Upper Upscale 1, Upper Upscale 2, Luxury 1, Luxury 2, and Luxury 3.

It was conducted by Dr. Chekitan S. Dev at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, Dr. Rebecca Hamilton at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, and Dr. Roland Rust at the School of Business at the University of Maryland.

The authors’ conclusion is that “[b]y subjecting amenities to a return-on-investment analysis, brand managers and hotel owners alike can make effective determinations of which amenities offer the greatest return both in terms of attracting first-time guests and driving repeat business.”

Do you use the hotel gym when you travel? Let us know in the comment section below!

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