NEW YORK—With guests’ increased desire for well-being, hotels now need to have a competitive edge when it comes to health and fitness offerings. Sbe is staying ahead of the curve, entering a multi-faceted global partnership with wellness and lifestyle brand, Dogpound.
The collaboration began with a customized fitness program at SLS South Beach and SLS Brickell, followed by the addition of Mondrian Doha and other Sbe properties as the partnership expands internationally.
“We chose to work with Dogpound as our customer base demographics are very similar—individuals seeking luxury lifestyle experiences in all facets of their life,” said Philippe Zrihen, chief business officer/partner, Sbe. “Dogpound is the exact program our customers have been looking for. The innovative approach to working out, the community feeling, the inclusionary and addictive nature of the workout combined with a healthy competitive environment, it all matches up perfectly with the modern-day, lifestyle approach to fitness.”
This marks the first hotel partnership for Dogpound and will provide Sbe guests with exclusive access to virtual training sessions. In the initial launch phase, Zrihen said, Dogpound trainers will coach Sbe guests through virtual one-on-one fitness training sessions in the comfort of their hotel rooms. The sessions are tailored to each guest’s fitness level and equipment access.
“While this is the first part of the Dogpound collaboration, our goal is to expand into a multi-faceted partnership and have physical trainers on property, as well as offer Dogpound-curated wellness-specific food and beverage menus at our properties,” he said.
According to Zrihen, 80% of consumers are more engaged with their health than they were prior to the pandemic and the partnership with Dogpound aims to serve their evolving interests.
“The pandemic has accelerated the move towards customized virtual training as a complement to physical location training,” Zrihen said. “With people staying at home, unable to follow their usual routines, we have all had to manage and adapt to new training approaches. As such, this led to an appreciation of the benefits of virtual training and the desire to have options available in hotels while traveling.”
Zrihen noted that the partnership with Dogpound is just the beginning of Sbe’s greater investment in wellness and will eventually be implemented across all of its global properties.
“As a lifestyle operator, our whole approach to hospitality is experiential in nature, meaning we constantly seek to appeal to our customers across all facets of their stay in a curated fashion,”he said. “That said, we needed to take the same approach to fitness, and that could not have been done by simply offering repetitive fitness routines or generic equipment to guests. It had to be innovative, interactive, bespoke and encompassing of many different fitness genres. It was then that we realized Dogpound epitomizes all these qualities and was utterly unique from others available in the hospitality space.”
