Seasonality in a hotel-based swimming school?
Who are your clients? Locals or tourists? Is your school dependent on the tourist season?
Our clients are mostly local residents, but during winter holidays, summer vacations, and even throughout the school year, hotel guests also use our services. I don’t consider our school to be dependent on seasonality. We operate from September to June, just like other swimming schools. We also run summer classes between late June and August. They take place on a smaller scale, but only due to the individual availability of our instructors.
Does running and organizing classes in a hotel pool require specific logistics, such as adjusting to hotel guests?
How is your cooperation with the hotel going? What benefits does the hotel gain from your activities? Of course, organizing classes in a hotel pool — just like in municipal pools — requires specific logistical planning. We try to anticipate how many hotel guests there might be, especially during winter holidays, long weekends, or May holidays, so that we can provide time and space for our students, hotel guests, and ourselves. We also run small, intimate groups of 2 or 3 people, which makes it easier to conduct lessons and allows us to see significantly faster progress in a shorter period of time.
From our perspective, working with a hotel is much more enjoyable than working in public swimming pools, mainly because the pool isn’t overcrowded with other schools. This gives us more opportunities not only to conduct classes, but also to organize events such as Children’s Day together with the hotel, or various themed days with activities for our students — and, incidentally, for hotel guests. When the occasion arises, we also bring in water balls or aqua fitness sessions. Thanks to our school, the hotel sees more visitors coming to the pool, and consequently benefits financially from increased ticket sales.
A valuable business for the local community
What equipment and accessories do you use during classes? Is it your own equipment, or does the hotel pool provide it?
We use a wide variety of equipment. We couldn’t list everything — starting with basic swimming gear such as noodles, kickboards, mats, and watering cups, all the way to sensory items like puzzles, blocks, and squeaky toys. This is all our private equipment, while the hotel pool provides its own for hotel guests.
Is this more of a business or a passion? And in this form, can/should it be scaled and developed, or rather nurtured?
At the beginning, it was purely passion. I’ve been swimming all my life, and teaching this skill to others is incredibly satisfying — especially considering the local landscape, which is full of lakes. When I heard that 80% of nearby residents couldn’t swim, I decided to change that.
My team also includes people whom I personally taught and helped improve their swimming, because they previously had no access to such opportunities. This gave me a lot to think about and showed how much potential there is for growing a business in a small town, even on a hotel pool.
At this point, it’s clear that it’s not only a passion but also a business, considering how quickly the company has grown and how many clients we now have.
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Interview by: Maciej Mazerant / Managing Editor, AQUA SPEED Magazine
Photos: Mega Wodni Swimming School
