Indoor cycling trends
Jack Thomas

As the founder and CEO of BASE studios in Bangkok and host of the Fitness Business Asia podcast, Jack Thomas will no doubt be a familiar name to RIDE HIGH readers across the APAC region. His mission through that weekly podcast, now close to its 300th episode: to raise the standards of the fitness industry in Asia, by gathering insight and learnings from the industry’s top thought-leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs.
His latest venture, The Fit Guide, effectively takes that mission global. An independent rating system for premium studios worldwide, The Fit Guide objectively assesses leading boutique brands to verify and celebrate excellence. Crucially, it also offers feedback to each studio on how it can improve and create five-star client experiences every time.

“A club with a simple design could scrape in with a five-star rating, but even the most beautiful club won’t if it doesn’t look after its members.”
The birth of The Fit Guide
Born of a chance meeting between Thomas and co-founder Matt Lavender, The Fit Guide is a marriage of their combined experience – Lavender formerly director of field evaluations for Forbes Travel Guide and now CEO of hospitality consultancy Enlites.

“We recognised that while restaurants and hotels have internationally-respected rating systems that assess quality and celebrate excellence, there was no industry standard, rating system or reliable, trusted guide for fitness clubs,” explains Thomas.
“Meanwhile, although the fitness sector often talks about delivering five-star, hotel-style service, there is plenty of room for improvement even in the experience-led boutique sector.
“We saw an opportunity to create a rating system for the world’s leading boutique studios, akin to the Forbes Travel Guide for hotels or the Michelin Guide for restaurants.”

Conceived in 2022 and launched in 2023, the initial plan was for an annual review on a city by city basis, providing studios with feedback and putting all those scoring 70+ per cent onto thefitguide.com – a way to help consumers find and experience the best of the best. Year one focused on Singapore, London, New York, Sydney and Dubai.
“Across all 250 studios, spanning five cities and five disciplines, only 3 per cent achieved an overall five-star rating.”
However, says Thomas: “There was such a lot of great information that we felt compelled to share it, helping the global industry understand where it can do better.”

In mid-2024, The Fit Guide therefore unveiled a series of reports sharing its findings: a full global report; a report for each of the five cities; and a report for each of the five modalities – indoor cycling, pilates, HIT/strength, yoga and barre. These will now be produced annually, with Miami and Los Angeles also added for 2024–25.
A new Fit Guide podcast is also on its way, with top studios – those scoring 80+ per cent – sharing their advice and learnings on how it’s done.
We pick up the story in a Q&A with Jack Thomas…
Jack, how does The Fit Guide work?
When we evaluate a studio, we’re assessing around 250 standards from studio design to arrival and reception, class experience to interaction before and after class, facilities and equipment to technology and online presence.

The class experience accounts for 50 per cent of the total score and around 75 per cent reflects how the team, the workout and the service made you feel from start to finish. It means a club with a fairly simple design could scrape in with a five-star rating, but even the most beautiful club will fail to do so if it doesn’t look after its members; we found a couple of million-dollar boutique studios in Sydney that sadly fell into this category.
“Five-star really is five-star, comparable to the top hotels. We aren’t just benchmarking within the fitness sector.”
It’s a wholly objective process. Every standard has a yes or no answer – was it achieved or not – with a huge amount of detail behind each standard to clarify what makes it a ‘yes’. That might vary from modality to modality – HIIT workouts require more upfront explanation of how the class will run compared to indoor cycling, for example, which will score a ‘yes’ with just a topline setting of expectations – but all standards apply to all modalities, all cities, all studios.

Important to note, our whole evaluation process approaches the experience from the perspective of a first-timer. If you aren’t looking after these individuals, you’re doing them and your business a disservice because they’ll never come back.
“Globally, only five indoor cycling studios achieved five stars overall and sadly one of those has since closed.”
For each city, our first step is to create a shortlist of 50 studios based on desk research. We want to identify the studios we feel could achieve a good rating, as this is what The Fit Guide is about from a consumer perspective. We ultimately want to become consumers’ go-to when choosing a boutique studio.
We then send out our professional Experience Evaluators, with Matt checking the reports for consistency as they come in. In every case, our evaluators arrive half an hour before class and stay half an hour after, meaning studios have plenty of opportunity to meet all our standards.
What were 2023–24’s topline results?
Across all 250 studios – spanning five cities and five disciplines – only 3 per cent achieved an overall five-star rating with a score of 90+ per cent. Given we had already created a shortlist, I’d suggest that translates to around 1 per cent of all studios worldwide.

Around half of the studios we assessed achieved a four-star rating – a score of 80+ per cent. Some of them were unhappy with this until we had our follow-up call and explained our evaluation process. Five-star really is five-star, comparable to the top hotels. We aren’t just benchmarking within the fitness sector.
That said, we are re-naming ‘four-star’ – it will now be ‘award-winning’ – because these are still incredibly good studios that probably have Google ratings of 4.8 or 4.9.
Our final rating is ‘recommended’, for which you have to score 70+ per cent; around a third of the 250 studios achieved this.
The remaining studios didn’t achieve the required minimum for inclusion in The Fit Guide, although we did reach out to share our findings and help them improve.
“There was a big discrepancy between the worst and best cycling studios. The key factor separating them: how they welcomed newcomers.”
What are the indoor cycling headlines?
Of the 250 studios, 32 were indoor cycling, which was fairly evenly spread across the five cities.
Overall, they did a great job of class experience, with instructors typically putting on a great show in a way we didn’t yet see in disciplines such as pilates. Boutique fitness started in cycling, led by brands such as SoulCycle, so there’s a good understanding of what it should feel like.

However, studios were let down in other areas such as reception services.
Nevertheless, indoor cycling ranked second overall among the five modalities, with every studio achieving at least ‘recommended’ status. Performance varied between cities, though: indoor cycling came top in Singapore, second in London and Dubai, third in New York and fourth in Sydney. In Sydney, there were no five-star cycling studios; the best was CycleBar Crows Nest, which we ranked ‘award-winning’.
Globally, only five indoor cycling studios achieved five stars overall and sadly one of these – a Boom Cycle studio in London – has since closed, highlighting what a tough market London has become. The remaining four are Storm Cycling in Mirdif, Dubai, and three studios in Singapore: Ally, R10T and XYCO.
“Cycling studios need to double down on the human connection. It’s hard to score highly when the client is just another body on a bike.”
We also have a separate ranking for class experience. Eight indoor cycling studios achieved five stars here: Storm Cycling, Ally and R10T as well as AARMY in New York, Ground Zero in Singapore, SoulCycle Hudson Yards in New York and Digme in Bank, London, which has since closed.
What did the five-star studios do well?
To achieve five stars, they were doing a lot well! But as a few pointers…
AARMY in New York was a great example of a superstar instructor managing to satisfy the front-row regulars with amazing choreography but at the same time make newcomers feel really welcome. There was meaningful contact – fist bumps and call-outs by name – as well as reassurance of what to do if you couldn’t keep up. It felt very inclusive even with its advanced programming. The studio also has a great online presence.

Ally in Singapore is an incredibly beautiful studio, but it also ticks the box of great connection with its clients. At XYCO in Singapore, the explanation of what was coming up was excellent. SoulCycle Hudson Yards was so on-brand at every touchpoint, from design to merchandise to class experience. And at Storm Cycling in Dubai, every single person went above and beyond to deliver a great experience, not just in the class but outside it too.
What can other studios do better?
There was a big discrepancy between the worst and best performing indoor cycling studios – an overall score of 70 per cent versus 91.5 per cent – with the key factor separating them being how they welcomed newcomers and made them feel comfortable.
Included here are points such as orientation, which can be as simple as explaining where to wait if you arrive early. Instructors should also introduce themselves and get to know first-timers before class. A simple ‘have you done indoor cycling before?’ goes a long way. Then learn and use the client’s name in class. Yes, it can be hard in a class of 60, but do try as it creates an instant connection.
Let newcomers know what to do if they can’t do the choreography – it can be a private word before class – and check in after class to see how they found it. And ask about injuries before class. Especially with all the double-time choreography going on, it was disappointing to see many cycling studios not doing this.
Cycling studios performed poorly on all of these standards, but the poorest scoring area generally was reception. There was a lot of indifference. Cycling studios need to do a lot better here if they want to create five-star experiences.

Looking at some of our key standards [see Indoor cycling under the Fit Guide microscope, below], it’s clear that cycling studios need to double down on the human connection: it’s hard to score highly when the client is just another body on a bike and the class just another hour in the instructor’s day.
Asking questions when someone arrives at the studio – showing a genuine interest in them – is such an easy win, yet cycling performed worst of all modalities on this standard.
Another area for improvement across all modalities, not just indoor cycling, is making a proactive effort to help clients continue training. By this we mean, if someone doesn’t already have a package with more classes, what are you doing to encourage them to come back?
This doesn’t have to be a sales push. It can be as simple as asking if they live locally, if they enjoyed the class, how often they train or if there’s anything you can help them with. It’s about engaging them, offering advice and being comfortable explaining the different packages – not simply telling a customer to look online. As an industry, we should be inspiring people to keep training, but this is one of our weak points.
What’s the future of indoor cycling?
Indoor cycling isn’t having its greatest moment right now, with reformer pilates the hot trend. Markets such as Singapore are having a particularly tough time, with competition still growing and lots of discounting. One operator I know said his indoor cycling studio used to be a ‘cheat code’ to making money. Now it might close.
Indoor cycling also relies heavily on great instructors, which is a challenge compared to modalities such as HIIT where the strength of the programming is key. It makes it tough to keep things consistent or to scale with star quality – something I believe franchise operation CycleBar is discovering.
However, as a modality, indoor cycling isn’t going anywhere. It’s a great business model – lots of people catered for in a small space – and people love it. I believe it will have another moment in the sun.

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