While Athens, Georgia may be known for having more bars per capita than any other city in the country, it also has a wide variety of exercise options for local residents to choose from. Spanning from cardio and strength training to kickboxing, Athens offers college students many choices regarding where to spend their money on local exercise.
All of the businesses are similar in that they are centered around exercise with an incentive to increase revenue, but they each have different aspects that differentiate them from their competition. Many qualities of the gyms affect their ability to be successful, including memberships fees, number of members, amenities offered, location, possible deals offered and so on.
In order to understand what makes certain businesses popular in a college town, I turned to the students and employees of these companies for their opinions on the Athens local exercise options. After conducting 20 interviews with these people, I chose to focus on the five businesses that were mentioned most frequently: Orangetheory Fitness, The Omni Club, Crunch Fitness, BLAST900 and Pure Barre.
I noticed right away that all five of these businesses are local branches of a corporate franchise. I was expecting at least one person to mention local companies such as Fuel Hot Yoga or Fitness @ Five, especially since I am a member of the latter and see students there daily. However, I am a former member of The Omni Club and have been to an Orangetheory Fitness class as well as a Pure Barre class, so I have witnessed the appeal of these businesses firsthand.
I have compiled my work into the following three elements: an interactive map depicting the locations of the five businesses and their rates, an infographic that reflects a compilation of the sentiments expressed in the 20 interviews I conducted and a short video highlighting my interviews with four students and four employees.
Click here to view the interactive map.