Gym chain trades plastic for fingerprinting to trim costs

LOS ANGELES - With gym memberships down across the fitness industry, the giant 24 Hour Fitness chain is taking a new cost-cutting approach to identifying its gym members - fingerprints.

The 428-gym chain, which issued more than 1 million plastic membership cards and key ring IDs last year, is converting to a system that identifies members by scanning the individual ridges on fingertips.

The San Ramon, Calif., company is characterizing the move as a green initiative, but Wally Boyko, publisher of the National Fitness Trade Journal, said it's a new way for gyms to cut costs - and fraud - in a tough economy.

"Nothing has been done like this before, but it's a very different time right now for the industry, and what you're seeing is membership drop off, people not renewing or even canceling their contracts," Mr. Boyko said. "This system will save money on plastic."

Not that Mr. Boyko is comfortable with the idea.

"Me personally, I wouldn't use it," he said. "I don't want my gym having more information on me than they already do."

A spokesman for 24 Hour Fitness Worldwide Inc., Danny De La Rosa, declined to say how much the privately held company was spending on the new system, or how much it hoped to save.

Fingerprint readers have already been installed in almost 200 of the firm's fitness centers, with the goal that all of them will have the new system by the end of the year.

"No more cards, no more plastic," Mr. De La Rosa said. "There's a benefit to that, environmentally and cost-wise, and it's actually a more secure system than the membership cards."

Mr. De La Rosa characterized the boost in security as being a benefit to customers. "Cards can be lost or stolen," he said.

But Mr. Boyko, whose company also puts on the annual National Fitness Trade Show, said there had been problems at gyms with people sharing membership cards. The fingerprint scanners could cut that out.

Mr. Boyko is not alone in a dislike of the system for privacy reasons. Discontented customers have used Web forums and blogs to sound off against it, and filed grievances with privacy advocacy organizations.

24 Hour Fitness members can opt out of the fingerprint system and instead show government-issued picture IDs when entering the centers. Mr. De La Rosa said only about 3 percent of patrons have chosen to do that in the gyms where the systems have been installed.

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Christopher Hovde uses a fingerprint scanner for entry into a 24 Hour Fitness club in Los Angeles. The club is expected to have the scanners in all of its 428 location by year's end. LAWRENCE K. HO / MCT Enlarge

With gym memberships down across the fitness industry, the giant 24 Hour Fitness chain is taking a new cost-cutting approach to identifying its gym members - fingerprints.