CoverMe launches PT platform for instant gym bookings

CoverMe has launched CoverMe PT, an on-demand platform for personal training bookings that extends its matching system into personal training.

The service uses CoverMe's existing AI matching engine, developed over four years through instructor-to-club matching across its wider fitness workforce management platform. The launch makes CoverMe PT the company's second product and marks a broader shift towards a multi-product system for fitness operators.

Initially, CoverMe plans to roll out the platform across the UK, the US and Europe. It already works with major fitness brands across four continents and has more than 30,000 active fitness professionals on its platform.

Booking focus

CoverMe PT is designed to connect gym members with personal trainers through fitness clubs' member apps. The white-labelled platform allows members to set a goal, receive a trainer match, book and pay through the app in under 10 seconds.

For trainers, the service is intended to deliver clients directly while handling diaries, payments and reminders. For gym operators, it includes compliance checks, reporting on booking conversions and retention, and tools to support different employment models, including employed trainers, paid shifts, self-employed arrangements and rental models.

Rosanna Tucker, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoverMe, said the company sees personal training as commercially important but often poorly managed in many clubs.

"Personal training is the most commercially valuable line in any club, and the most operationally overlooked. The way most facilities sell PT hasn't changed since the 1980s: trainers walking the gym floor, touting for business at reception and hoping to catch a member at the right moment," Tucker said.

She said member expectations have shifted away from in-person sales approaches.

"But members don't want to be interrupted mid-workout to be sold to. They want to discover, choose and book PTs on their own terms, with the immediacy and energy of a social media platform," Tucker said.

Trainer retention

CoverMe is also positioning the platform as a response to high turnover among personal trainers. It said around 80% of personal trainers leave within their first year, while turnover in the sector can reach 50% because of a lack of clients.

Tucker said the issue is often linked less to coaching ability than to the sales demands placed on trainers.

"Staggeringly, around 80% of personal trainers drop out within their first year, and it's not because they're not good at their job. Often they're simply not loud, super-confident gym-floor sellers, which is what the sector rewards," Tucker said.

She added that the platform is intended to shift trainers' time away from finding leads and towards delivering sessions.

"CoverMe PT allows PTs to focus on training people, not selling. Every new member, every welcome, is matched and booked in real time. It's on-demand, curated and frictionless, just the way Netflix, Uber and Airbnb taught a generation to expect everything else in their lives," Tucker said.

Early results

CoverMe cited pilot data showing a 40% uplift in first-time personal training bookings, a 25% increase in member engagement through early induction nudges, and a 21% rise in revenue through group session conversion. The company also said trainer onboarding can be completed in under six minutes.

Beverlee Browne, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of CoverMe, linked the launch to retention patterns among gym members in their first few months.

"Most member churn happens in the first 90 days when those who don't feel immediate value leave. But members who book a PT session in their first 14 days are up to 60% more likely to stay beyond 90 days. However, 60% of members abandon PT when the booking process isn't instant. CoverMe PT changes that. It's engineered to make PT bookings happen automatically, at scale, across every club in your estate," Browne said.

She said the product had been shaped by the company's work with large fitness brands and by problems it had seen in day-to-day club operations.

"We've spent four years inside the operations of some of the biggest fitness brands in the world. We know exactly what breaks, where revenue leaks and what operators need from a platform," Browne said.

"CoverMe PT was built from that knowledge. It's the product the industry has been asking us for," Browne said.