Fitness studios are growing in Portugal and are stealing gym fans. People seem to increasingly value personalized training.
Os Portuguese are amazed with “personal trainers” – aka PTs.
Commitment, proximity, and differentiated and adjusted monitoring every body is valued more and more by people.
This is Delmiro Costa, owner of a fitness studio in Porto, speaking in an interview with (JN).
In the morning, two regulars at Delmiro’s space corroborated the PT’s thesis: “Unlike traditional gyms, which have a lot of people and distractions, here we have a targeted and proximity training“; “It’s a great incentive training with a PT pulling us and explaining how we should do the exercises to get better results.”
The covid-19 pandemic brought the need to reinvent training spaces. Hence, new interests and business opportunities emerged.
According to Informa D&B, a company that studies the business fabric, in 2020 59 gyms closed (the highest value since 2015). Conversely, more and more fitness studios have been opening.
As JN details, in 2023, 177 spaces opened. This year, as of September, 169 had already opened.
There are currently 1,367 spaces linked to fitness in Portugal – especially in the districts of Porto (272) and Lisbon (327).
The last Fitness Barometer, cited by JN, estimated that there were, in Portugal, more than 700 thousand practitionersa number that is expected to grow this year.
The president of Portugal Activo, José Castro, confirmed to the same newspaper that there has been an increase in personalized training studios in the last two years. Even so, Portugal is far from the European average.
