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Fulwood Leisure Centre |
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Diplomada/o en Educación Física por la Universidad de Murcia (España) |
Ida Cortés Ibáñez Tomás Marín Navarro |
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Abstract This article we describe “Fullwood Leisure Centre” in Preston (United Kingdom), like the facilities and services that it offers to customers. Keywords: Centro deportivo. Servicios. Clientes.
Resumen: En este artículo vamos a describir el centro deportivo “Fullwood Leisure Centre”, así como las instalaciones de las que consta y los servicios que ofrece a los usuarios. Palabras clave: Leisure centre. Services. Customers.
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EFDeportes.com, Revista Digital. Buenos Aires, Año 16, Nº 155, Abril de 2011. http://www.efdeportes.com/ |
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1. Introduction
In this assignment we are going to analyze the sport centre which we visited in Preston city, Fullwood Leisure Centre. We will start with some important concepts to take into account.
1.1. Sport and leisure service concept
The first component is the leisure service concept. This represents customer needs and the features of the product or transaction and the nature of the service encounter. The customer utility and benefit are important elements in the sport and leisure experience.
The sport and leisure service concept contains the bundle of attributes or benefits the consumer is seeking and relates to the core product or activity and the augmented product or additional services like hospitality. It also defines what business the organization is in and how it should promote and organize itself. (McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman, 2004)
1.2. Sport and leisure service system
The production management model of adding value and converting inputs into outputs, adapted to apply to service industries, is further modifies here to embrace sport and leisure management. The sport and leisure service system establishes what is needed in order to meet the customer requirements and the product features described by the service concept. It refers to the resources and inputs to the service process and how they are deployed and helps to identify the service standards in all aspects of the operation. The service system has several elements which interrelate as they shape service encounters. (McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman, 2004)
2. Fullwood Leisure Centre
Fullwood Leisure Centre is in Preston (UK) and its location can be seen in Appendix 1.
In this gym there are eighty people working there.
2.1. Parking area
It is a big area which offers enough space for:
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People with disabilities. The entry of the gym has a ramp to avoid any difficulty.
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Family: big cars with a mother or father with her or his children have his parking too.
The rest of the parking area is used by the other customers.
The whole parking is watched over by safety cameras to prevent crime. If customers feel uncomfortable or unsafe they may be deterred from taking part in sport and physical activity.
2.2. Exteriors
Exteriors of the installation and, fundamentally the exit ramps, must be urbanized (asphalt cap) as the first barrier against the dirt, following in the same entry 2/3 meters with a system (doormat...) whose characteristics it facilitates the cleanliness of the footwear of the users. (Andrés, 1981).
Fullwood is according to this, so the exteriors have these requirements.
2.3. Reception
Underhill found that we tend to enter a facility at some speed and take a while to slow down. So, left unchanged, the travelling activity at the entrance would take our customers past all the information signs and leave them stranded in the heart of the area. Rethinking the approach to the entrance and providing the right blend of space plan, skin and stuff, we can ensure that customers are encouraged into the space, welcomed, and slowed down. We might use the colour contrast of the harder-wearingfloor covering at the high-traffic entrance with the more aesthetic floor covering in the rest of the space, to signal the extent of the ´transition zone. Knowing which way customers are most likely instinctively to turn helps us to position seats, brochure racks and other stuff more appropriately. (McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman, 2004)
According to this, the reception in Fullwood Leisure Centre is very appropriate. In the reception there is a machine for free internet.
Underhill points out that we will look at racks of items for quite a while but the second we fear someone brushing behind us, our instinctive defensive reflex is to abandon even an important task and leave. So the space plan must leave enough circulation space behind this to avoid what Underhill called the “butt-brush effect”. (McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman, 2004)
With regard to the previous thing, we can emphasize that the zone where we can find the leaflet is removed from the stuff, so the clients do not have to feel observed.
2.4. Coffee bar
You may not need a permanent wall to delineate different space; the same effect might be achieved through folding dividers and different coloured carpets or various layouts of furniture and plants. Your food area might employ screens or a variety of levels to ensure that it is as welcoming when ten people are dining there, as it is when 100 are seated. (McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman, 2004)
Following the previous paragraph the Fullwood Leisure Centre has these characteristics as you can see in the picture too (green walls, screens…)
It has settees with low tables, higher tables with chairs to eat, chairs for the children, and televisions.
2.5. Track
There will be marked the lines of the sports practiced with more frecuently in the room. These lines, of permanent character, must be resistant to the graze and must contrast with the back of the pavement.
On the pavement there were realized the openings and anchorages necessary for the mobile devices. The orifice, when it is not used, must be covered for a lid of the same constitution of the pavement that fit perfectly with it. (Andrés, 1981).
The leisure centre has a track that has the characteristics previously mentioned. It is exclusively used by the pupils of the school that is next to the gym. In this track pupils practice Physical Education (volleyball, basketball, football, cricket, badminton, other sports and to do exams too).
2.6. Swimming pool
This type of swimming pools, in which practically competitions are not celebrated worldwide already, adopts two variants: that of 33,333 meters of length, which has 16,666 meters of width, and that of 25 meters of length, with 12,50 meters of width. (Juan de Cusa, 1993).
The walls of the swimming pool must be parallel bars two to two, vertical with regard to the bottom of the glass and perpendicular.
The walls will form right angle with the surface of the water, and will be constructed by a solid material. The surface will not be slippery and one will extend, at least, 80 centimeters below the level of the water, so that they allow the swimmer to touch and to take impulse in the turns, safely. Juan de Cusa (1993).
The leisure centre has a swimming pool of second type and fulfills the regulated characteristics mentioned previously.
There are different swimming timetables for different kind of public. (Appendix 2).
The water of the swimming pool has twenty nine degrees.
There is a small swimming pool for babies; the water of this swimming pool has thirty one degrees.
To support the warm water in the swimming pool, they put a tent to certain height, to avoid losing heat in the enclosure and inside the water. This they do to spend less money too.
The number of lifeguards depends on the public; they usually have one or two lifeguards in the big swimming pool and other in the small swimming pool.
Fullwood Leisure Centre has free swimming for sixteen and under and sixty and over (Appendix 3).
2.7. Gym
The gym is the most useful area for the customers. The gym is very big, it has a lot of cardiovascular machines and other machines for the several muscular groups. Inside the gym there is a receptionist to help the customers in case of any doubt.
The new challenges support the awkward sportsmen. The positive results foment the spirit. To help the associates to support the stimulation of the first results and to support the positive sensations provides options of training more demanding and new results. (Life Fitness Journey)
Each customer has a key that they have to put in the machine when they do sport. They put her key in other machine (Wellness Expert) which says to them, their physical state. In this way, they can check if they increase their physical state or no. In Fullwood Leisure Centre we can observe that this is so, since the machines play an important role in costumers.
Windows will be made from a special component according to the safety measures (armed glass, plexiglas ...) and of translucent character, avoiding any problems (reflexes of the solar beams). (Andrés, 1981)
The gym is surrounded with windows, so it has a great luminosity. So, it has the specific characteristics said before.
The maintenance and the constant hygiene are fundamental. It is advisable that when we visit an installation we could verify which is the condition of hygiene of wardrobes and collective rooms. The constant care on the part of the center as to educate the clients for the use of towel. (Andrés, 1981).
According with the previously thing Fullwood has a good condition of hygiene. In the gym there is music, televisions, takings, paper (to personal cleanliness) and water. Music is good for the people, so they cheer up when they are doing exercise. The use of paper is important because it has as aim to develop in customers´ hygiene habits. That is why when they stop using a machine they should clean it for the next customer.
Inside the gym the temperature is twenty degrees, this temperature is good because when the customers start to do exercise this degrees are good for them. Quest recommends eighteen degrees.
2.8. Fitness rooms
The leisure centre has two fitness rooms (Appendix 4). One of them is very big and the other is small.
These fitness studios are used to do classes of aerobic, yoga, salsa, meringue, waltz, cha-cha, rumba, samba, tango between others.
They should be some fitness studio more, because the leisure centre is very big, so they have a lot of workers and customers and they could offer some activity more in the same hour.
2.9. Saunas
The sauna is a small room or hut heated to around 80 degrees Celsius. It is used for bathing as well as for mental and physical relaxation.
The leisure centre has two saunas. These are mixed and sometimes one of them is only for one sex. (Appendix 5).
2.10. Squash
The squash is practised in a rectangular closed room surrounded with high walls of white color. The height of the roof can change. The lighting is realized by fluorescent pipes. The lines of the track must be perfectly seen. (Juan de Cusa, 1993).
Fullwood has three squash courts that answer the previous information. One of them has several uses, for example to put the table tennis or an inflatable castle for the children (four days per week).
2.11. Treatment room
A very special beauty salon where you can escape into a serene world and experience all aspects of Beauty Therapy and Day Spa treatments for well-being. Using essential oils and stones to purify, soothe, revitalize & restore balance to both mind and body.
Fullwood Leisure Center could incorporate some ranges and treatments to improve his service, how Aromatherapy Associates wraps and massage, Eve Lom, Dibi facials, Waxing, LaStone, Crystal Clear Microdermabrasion and Oxygen Therapy.
2.12. Changing room
Male, female and family areas are together in the same room but in different passages. There is a baby changing or group; or for a determinate group (school, older people). There is also a toilet and changing to people with disabilities, more big than rest of toilets.
The wash-basins must have warm and cold water with temporizador, mirrors in sufficient number, towel racks, etc. The mirrors and dryers must remain isolated from the corridors of maximum traffic and separated, prudently, from the sanitary ones. (Andrés, 1981)
Inside the changing room there is a zone of showers, this is mixed, both for men and women and other zone with three mirrors and hair-dryers that fulfill the mentioned requirements. Nevertheless, there are only three showers and mirrors with hair-dryers, which is not sufficient for all the customers.
Fullwood Leisure Centre has pre-school activities (Appendix 6).
In the leisure centre there is a lift. It has a mirror, very shining and suitable for people with disabilities.
Outside the gym, in the passage there is a recyclable zone, to leave the organic and plastic rubbish.
There is also a zone with vending machines. It is good for the customers because if they need to eat or drink something they can do it; and this requires few minutes and this zone is near to the gym.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, this leisure centre has much availability for the customers and has a very good equipment. It is one of the best in Preston.
Fullwood Leisure Centre is in a central place and near a bus stop, being easy to find the gym.
Customers are delighted with the service received because the staff every year does a questionnaire to improve the things that customers need. This is a good indicator to qualify as a good leisure centre.
Fullwood Leisure Centre has achieved Quest for continuous improvement in Leisure Centre Management.
Through regular on site assessment, and mystery visits, it has been awarded the status of: Quest Highly Commended.
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Bibliography
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Andrés, F. (1981) El proyecto de salas. Spain.
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Andrés, F. (1981) Uso y mantenimiento de las salas de deporte. Spain.
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Cusa, Juan de (1993) Instalaciones deportivas. Spain.
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Johnston, R., and Clark, G (2008) Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery. 3d. edition, UK.
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Lyfe Fitness Journey.
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McMahon-Beattie, U, and Yeoman, I. (2004). Sport and leisure operations management. UK.
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EFDeportes.com, Revista
Digital · Año 16 · N° 155 | Buenos Aires,
Abril de 2011 |
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