Gyms & Digital Nomads: An Unsolved Problem

How Can Digital Nomads Reconcile with Their Gym Routine?

Do you know what annoys me the most most in my new digital nomad life? Gyms. Wherever I travel, it seems impossible to get a free day trial, and even a weekly membership for a reasonable price seems a utopia. “No sir. If you want, you can pay by the day, but one day is 15 EUR, so you may still want to pay for the monthly plan which is 60 EUR...”

This is insane and disproportionate. This is an authentic problem in search of a practical solution: a gym network which allows digital nomads to have a gym pass anywhere they go, without having to sign for an overpriced short-term membership in each place they visit.

So far, the closest service to this idea is hussle.com, but it's for the UK only and not really thought for digital nomads.

The Harsh Truth

Many digital nomads give up on gyms, because they come in expensive when you plan to sign up for just a few days or weeks. In turn, gyms, by penalizing short-term customers, miss out an important source of income.

The coronavirus pandemic hit gyms harder than any other business. To recover, gyms have to come up with new streams of income. A great gift the pandemic gave back is the new wave of digital nomads stemming around the world! Occasional visitors will become more and more the norm for gyms, especially in places like capital cities. How to profit from them in an efficient way? Gyms hate occasional visitors because they forces gyms to continually chase new customers. Customer acquisition is expensive and time-consuming. Customer retention is way more effective and lucrative. What could ever make occasional customers as profitable as regular ones? My thought came while looking at a platform like BetterHelp.com. This is a platform where you can find a therapist who can help you wherever you are, in any part of the world, while making psychological therapy more affordable for everyone, especially for who travels all the time. Why there cannot be a similar platform which brings gyms from all around the world together? You pay a monthly membership and your fee is pooled and spread among all the gyms taking part in the program. The system could work even on a blockchain, to make the income partition transparent while keeping processing fees as low as possible.

Let's create two user stories for this possible product, to better understand how this would work!

Tania's Story

Tania is a digital nomad, working as a translator. She loves working out and keeping healthy and good looking. Obviously, Tania loves travelling too. The problem is that whenever she travels, she struggles to find a gym to use. They don't allow a free trial, some don't even offer a weekly membership. Gyms often put Tania in front of a hard choice: pay a whole month, without even trying the gym before, or pay by the day. A month costs around 60 EUR, but a single day can cost even 15 EUR! Tania feels robbed and too often she gives up on working out when she's abroad. The more Tania travels, the more extra pounds she puts on. This causes her stress, something which grows further when the guys Tania dates on Tinder get disappointed to see the girl they meet in real life is not the same stunning bikini model they could admire on the dating app. This makes Tania feel bad. She wants to get back in perfect shape so much, that in the end she gives up on nomadic life and settles in a place where a yearly membership is a great deal. Tania gets attractive again, her self-confidence return to good levels, but she still misses something in her life: travelling on a regular basis.

Kevin's Story

Kevin is another digital nomad who's a travel addict, but he's also proud of his muscles. He used to be a competitive cross-fit athlete, before an injury forced him to leave competitive sport. Nevertheless, he still enjoys lifting some good pounds three times a week to keep his body in good shape. Kevin, like Tania, is a Tinder hit. However, Kevin's biggest problem is that he loves eating too. When he travels, he doesn't keep from trying every local speciality. With time, he grows so tired with gyms blackmailing him, forcing him to choose very long packages he'll never use fully, that he stops going to the gym. Travelling is more important than lifting weights. He thinks he will be able to train at home with body-weight workouts. However, soon Kevin quits even home-workouts. With time, he becomes a fat dude and by the edge of 40, he starts developing cardiovascular disorders. His health drops significantly. At least, he keeps on travelling... Life could be worse...

When an App Comes into Tania's and Kevin's Life

One day, both Kevin and Tania bump into an app called HotAnywhere. What the heck is that?

HotAnywhere is a service which allows you to sign up for a universal gym membership. This universal pass allows you to grant access in every gym around the world participating in the program! Today you're in Madrid and you use your HotAnywhere pass to train at 9Fitness, tomorrow you will be in Paris, accessing HealthCity with the same pass! All of them available for you, while paying a unique membership for the best rate possible! No more triple gym memberships in three different cities. No more waste of money! Finally, Tania and Kevin can combine their two biggest passions: travelling and training! A dream come true!

What else we need? Oh, do you want a happy ending for Tania and Kevin? Alright. One evening, at Get Fit 24 in Warsaw, Tania bumps into Kevin. They start talking about their digital nomad lives. They find common ground when they remember their struggles in travelling and keeping in good shape at the same time. It was hard, it was expensive! Now they are happy since they use HotAnywhere. By accident, they booth are moving the next day, to another city, the same city! Their first date is at Mega Fitness in Prague! It was glorious and now, three years later into their relationship, Tania and Kevin are still together, waiting for the third member in their team... Wherever they will travel and wherever they will train, we send our best wishes to Tania and Kevin for their new family! :-)

The Concept Behind HotAnywhere

The concept is clear, isn't it? Let's sum it up:

1. Download HotAnywhere,
2. Create a new account on the app,
3. Check all the gyms available in your next destination, adhering to the program,
4. Choose your membership (yearly has the best value of course, but you have one free trial to spend anywhere!),
5. Choose your payment method,
6. Go and train wherever you like!

OK, but where's the reward for the gyms? The reward stands in the fact gyms will receive a regular stream of income, regardless of how many customers they will have in their gyms and regardless of disruptive events (read it lockdowns). If blockchain based, HotAnywhere will distribute the clients fees in this way:

• every gym will get a % of all the processing fees from membership subscriptions, regardless of how many clients will visit them and whether the gym is open or not,
• every gym will get one day of membership for each day spent there by the customer (for example 1/365 for yearly memberships),
• rewards can be paid in stable coins or even fiat, to avoid any headache with fluctuating tokens,

This is a draft of the idea. There are things to address, the most important of which is the price differences between cities, which sometimes can be significant. A gym in Tallinn is way cheaper than a gym in Munich. The app can address these differences by using a token system rather than a time-based membership. For example, one training session in Tallinn will cost just one token, while training in Munich will cost 3 tokens. The more tokens you buy, the more convenient the package will be.

If you find this idea intriguing, comment below! Who knows you will find the right business partner! Nah, I don't plan to develop this idea myself, because I have a book to finish (Thank You, President Corona!) and because I'm going to start a new exciting job soon and I'll dedicate myself 100% to it.

Oh, then if you want to donate some shares of this start-up, I won't get offended... ;-)