Convert Platform Members Into Pilates Regulars

Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., your Reformer class is full. Six of the ten spots were booked through a sports flat-rate platform. You know their first names, you know who prefers the spot by the window and who always sets the springs too heavy. What you don't have: a single phone number, a single email address. If one of those six quits next month, nobody tells you. You just see an empty carriage.

That's no reason to demonise the channel. Platforms fill off-peak slots, they bring in people who would never have walked through your door otherwise, and they pay reliably. The problem only starts when platform guests stay platform guests forever. This guide shows you how to turn them into direct members – without burning the channel and without landing yourself in legal trouble.

How the platform model actually pays out

Before you change anything, know what you're dealing with. Take Urban Sports Club, the dominant player in German-speaking Europe: according to its own partner help centre, it pays an amount per check-in that both contracting parties agree in advance. A month's check-ins are bundled and transferred automatically by the 15th of the following month; the credit note sits in the Partner Portal as a PDF.

Partners with integrated booking are also on the “Expected Attendance” payout model. In short: every booking on file when the cancellation window closes is guaranteed to be paid out. So a no-show still earns you money. So does a late cancellation – unless someone else takes the spot, in which case you get that person's check-in rather than an extra one. The free cancellation window defaults to twelve hours before class and can be shortened in the Partner Portal.

That's fairer than studio owners often assume, and it's worth knowing the detail instead of arguing from gut feeling. The sore point is elsewhere: what you get per check-in depends on the guest's membership tier, not on your class price. And the relationship – booking, reminders, referrals, cancellation – runs through the platform's app. Not through you.

There's a structural shift on top of that. In March 2025, Wellhub (formerly Gympass) and Urban Sports Club announced a definitive agreement for Wellhub to acquire Urban Sports Club – a deal worth roughly 600 million US dollars, subject to competition authority approval. Whether that turns out well or badly for your studio, nobody knows yet. What's certain: the terms of your biggest third-party channel will be decided inside a group where your studio is a very small line item. Which is exactly why it makes sense to build a second, direct layer of relationship now.

The expensive mistake: occupancy is not loyalty

A full class feels like success. But occupancy that comes through third-party channels is borrowed demand: it disappears the moment the platform adjusts its terms, ranks your studio lower, or a competitor opens two streets away. Loyalty doesn't come from someone checking in often – it comes from them calling your studio “my studio”. What that looks like day to day is covered in our guide to customer retention in Pilates studios.

In practice you need three things per guest that the platform won't give you: a name, a contact channel with documented consent, and a visit history. Only then can you react before someone drifts away. What that looks like specifically in Reformer and Pilates studios isn't complicated – but it doesn't happen on its own either.

Five steps from check-in to direct membership

1. Work out who actually keeps coming back

Not every platform guest is a candidate. The interesting ones came three times or more in four weeks, almost always book the same time slot, and hang around for five minutes after class. Pull the check-in list once a month and mark exactly those names. In a studio running twelve classes a week that list is short enough to approach everyone personally – and long enough to be worth the effort.

2. Get consent before you send anything

The platform's check-in list is not a mailing list. Before you message anyone you need their explicit consent – and the easiest place to collect it is where the guest is already standing: at the desk, right after class. The simplest route is a QR code that lets them drop a digital stamp card into their Wallet in seconds. No app download, no password, no clipboard form. From that moment you have your own card, your own push channel and a visit history that belongs to you – running alongside the platform, not against it.

3. Make the direct offer better, not cheaper

The most common mistake is trying to undercut the flat rate. You can't win that price war, and you devalue your own product in the process. Give direct members what a platform structurally cannot deliver instead: guaranteed spots in the two classes that are always full. A 14-day booking window instead of 7. One workshop per quarter at no extra cost. The Reformer by the window. A personal reassessment after three months. These perks cost you almost nothing and make instant sense in a side-by-side comparison.

4. Raise the switch when the moment offers itself

Three moments make the switch easy: after the third visit within a month, right after someone couldn't book a class because it was full, and when someone tells you about their back pain or a specific goal after class. The line itself is unremarkable: “You're basically here every week now – want me to show you what our direct membership costs? It would lock in your spot in the Tuesday class.” That's all it takes. The same mechanic works with newcomers; how to run that cleanly is in our guide on how to turn a trial class into a membership.

5. Keep what you've won

A switch only counts as a win if it holds for six months. Plan the first 90 days deliberately: a message after their first class as a direct member, a nudge when nothing has been booked for ten days, a small reward after the tenth visit. Formé Studio in Wiener Neudorf reports that a Wallet programme of this kind brought in 340 community members in the first four weeks and triggered more than 2,500 interactions.

The legal side (Germany – check your own jurisdiction)

Two points studios regularly get wrong.

First: in Germany, advertising by email, SMS or messenger requires the recipient's prior explicit consent under § 7 (2) no. 2 of the Unfair Competition Act (UWG). German chambers of commerce point out that WhatsApp and social media messages count as “electronic mail” too. There is a narrow existing-customer exception in § 7 (3) UWG – it only applies if you obtained the address in connection with selling your own service, you advertise similar services of your own, the person hasn't objected, and you point out the right to object in every message. A check-in via a platform generally doesn't meet that bar. So collect consent actively – documented, with a date. If you operate outside Germany, the equivalent rules (ePrivacy, GDPR, PECR and so on) work along similar lines, but check your own.

Second: read your partner contract. Platform agreements can include rules about how you may approach platform users. An offer that sits visibly at reception for every guest is a different thing from a targeted poaching message sent to names pulled off the check-in list. When in doubt, have both reviewed by a lawyer once – that costs less than a cease-and-desist letter.

A worked example: what one switch is worth

The numbers below are an illustration, not a benchmark – plug in your own. Say you receive €8 per platform check-in and a regular comes four times a month: €32 in revenue. The same person as a direct member on a €99 monthly plan brings you €99, roughly three times as much, with identical class occupancy. Five switches like that add around €335 a month – without a single new person in the studio. Run it with your real rates before you decide how much effort this topic deserves.

Keep the channel – own the relationship

You don't need to leave any platform. The lever is different: treat every check-in as a first contact, not as revenue. If you want to see how guests become your own community – Wallet card, push notifications, status tiers, no app download – then book a short demo. Fifteen minutes, walked through your studio's numbers.