Free Swimming

Six months since the launch of the Government’s free swimming initiative Leisure Connection is reporting huge successes with over 400,000 people who qualify for the scheme swimming in their pools across the UK.

“The scheme has seen fantastic uptake far better that we envisaged – a few of our centres are already nearing the end of their grant allocation and we have only just reached the half way point! We have seen an additional 80,000 visits in the first five months against the same time period last year”, says Kate McKnight, Leisure Connection’s National Product Development Manager.

Leisure Connection has been praised by clients and customers alike for its implementation of the groundbreaking scheme and explains the secrets of their success…

Kate continues: “Planning and organisation with our Local Authority partners has been the key to a successful launch of free swimming. Working together with our clients early on has been extremely important. We spent a great deal of time looking at the scope of the scheme and together we reached sensible conclusions for client and customer alike.”
“We have invested a great deal into local PR and marketing to communicate the initiative and continue to keep the free swim at the forefront of our customer’s minds. We also spent time briefing all site-based employees about how to cope with peaks in demand for sessions and as a result recruited appropriately to reflect larger bather loads. We prepared ourselves for the possibility of a negative reaction but we have been lucky and only received positive feedback.”

The key to getting this initiative right in the future is two-way communication with customers says Leisure Connection. The company is investing a great deal into data management and finding out what their customers like and what they don’t. They believe this will be invaluable.

“We have received fantastic comments from our customers who have now realised that swimming is a great family activity and a really affordable way of beating the credit crunch, some of our older customers have been given the opportunity to take up lessons and develop a life skill that has been missing since childhood; building their confidence in the water has been a fantastic and rewarding experience for our many Aquatic Teachers and Coaches.”

As a result of the initiative Leisure Connection has been able to develop and launch a range of pool based exercise programmes, which are proving extremely popular and have been working with the ASA to offer free swimming lessons.

“Free swimming lessons offered by the ASA are proving extremely popular with the majority of people booking further lessons the following term, which is a win-win situation for all involved.”