In many locations around the world and thousands across the United States, the nearest gyms can be found at your fingertips on the Zeamo app, which allows you to buy a day pass without filling out paperwork or being forced to hear a sales pitch when you walk into a health club.
Zeamo (pronounced zee-ah’-mo) also lets you filter your searches to find gyms with pools, saunas, massages, physiotherapy and even childcare.
CEO Paul O’Reilly-Hyland says the trend in the fitness market over the past few years has been towards boutique rather than big box–classes and studios– especially in larger cities.
“It’s about the ability to access fitness,” he said in a recent interview from the company’s New York offices. As a financial industry executive who also trains for triathlons, he always faced the same circumstances while traveling – going to a club, showing his passport and paying a day rate.
Hence, the creative concept for Zeamo. “My goal for the platform is that you could travel and with one swipe, you could go into a gym,” he said.
Zeamo, which started a couple of years ago, also recently launched an enterprise solution for companies. It’s ideal for those that have employees in multiple locations as well as those with staffers who travel frequently.
Paul O’Reilly-Hyland
“The bigger picture is a healthier, fitter workforce – and the company’s insurance premiums may be lower by providing this for their employees,” O’Reilly-Hyland said, noting that Zeamo is focusing on increasing its presence in the corporate marketplace.
Having the ability to go to multiple fitness clubs or classes in different locations can also be an incentive for people to work out more often.
The app is geo-based, giving the user a list of options in the vicinity and the type of passes that are available – daily, weekly and sometimes even monthly.
On the corporate side, it’s a subscription to Zeamo that employees can access.
O’Reilly-Hyland says Zeamo is adding new venues all the time, and they’re up to about 25,000 worldwide.
We tried the app in the West Los Angeles area, a part of the city not exactly known for large numbers of gyms, and was offered a selection of the more boutique-y, non-national chain sort of places to work out.
As a result of checking some of them out, we’re now members at a place we wouldn’t have really known about – or considered – because of its location in a very congested area. But it turns out there was a “secret” place to park for it and a back way inside, avoiding the crowds.
So add this to a subset of user benefits–the ability to find a new home gym after trying it out hassle-free through Zeamo.
