Nowadays, there is getting ready to be a huge rollup of clubs with many of the clubs either being bought out or closing their doors completely. Many times, the owners of the clubs want to shut the doors as fast as possible to avoid legal troubles, press involvement, theft, and employee bashlash. So, for you the consumer, how can you tell if your club is getting ready to hit the chopping block?

Three Ways To Spot Financial Trouble

A Sudden Decrease In Rates For New Members. Many owners turn to this tactic to try to encourage more people to join. The problem comes in when that's all they do. In most cases, this is the only thing that owners know to do when the club starts to have trouble. Sadly enough, this tactic can work in the short term to great success. However, soon enough the revenue will start to fall off again and even lower rates follow (again, because that is all that they know). To make it simple, if you start to see a firesale, you know there's a reason.

Constant Employee Turnover. This isn't as noticable to most but employee turnover generally means that the ownership group either has no idea how to hire the right people or that the group continually lies to their employees about pay or pay scale and they leave. Neither is a good thing. You can't have happy, paying members without happy, committed employees.

Sudden Removal of Key Programs. There is no such thing as addition by subtraction in the health club industry. Many times, the owners of a club will justify the removal by saying that no one is using the program (even though you know that it's not the case). This is usually one of the first things you'll notice.

Hopefully, you'll never see any of these in your club. However, if you do, find a new club quickly.