In the nutshell, Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club’s location is very easily accessible, especially to premium area, has very large size, and luxurious design, which is perfect and match to serve its premium costumer.
Product
Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club has two core products which are the spa and fitness club. In this section, we will focus only to the fitness club product. The fitness club offers no ordinary service because it has over 150 state of the new art fitness machines, cardiovascular equipment, 25 m, 6-lane swimming pool, 2 whirlpools and therapy pool, 16 ft scuba diving pool (which is the most amazing), kinesis wall, 280 ft jogging track, rock climbing wall, indoor golf ranges, and squash court, dry and steam sauna room, and many more. Moreover, it offers variety of activities such as aerobic, yoga, kooksundo, bodypump, aquarobic and many other classes. It also offers lesson and personal trainer to the beginners in gymnasium, swimming, scuba diving, golf, and squash. So its core product are the fitness club and its activity inside the fitness club. Inside the fitness club, they offer natural sunlight from solar panel, natural air like in the mountains of Korea, and natural water in all the pools to promote healthier skin and stress relief.
They also offer peripheral product such as 30 mins-body scrub and 1 hour massage (woman only). Inside the fitness club, you also can find the restaurant that serves healthy menu, Korean cuisine, fine drinks and many more, also lounge that offers games, scrumptious snacking favorites and private karaoke room.
Price
From the picture above, we can see that the price of the fitness club membership fee is incredibly expensive compares to school fitness club near the dormitory (30.000 each month). This shows that the customer of this fitness club is very high income person and incredibly care about the quality of his/her health. For each month, you have to spend for more than 550.000 KRW to enjoy the facility of this fitness club. Not only that, to enjoy another activity and some another classes, you have to pay more, shown by the pictures above. In my opinion, their services are overpriced. I do not really know their competitors but I analyze that Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club is the leader in the premium fitness club and only few fitness clubs offer almost same service (e.g Shilla Hotel fitness club). That is why they can get competitive advantage and have a nerve to set high price because they think their position are the best in the town.
From my visiting experience, I see the customer of the fitness club is not much, even I visit it at night (after working-hour). When I ask the staff, they say customer mostly come on weekend. The customers of the fitness club are mostly old people, maybe the parents of rich child. They is also targeting couple and corporate customer, by the differentiation strategy of price shown on the picture.
Promotion
I hardly find the Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club advertisement or promotion strategy in the website or newspaper. It is usually the JW Marriott advertisement first, and followed by the detail of Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club (like shown as the picture above). In the JW Marriott advertisement (either in article in website or newspaper), they always promote Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club as the best fitness club in Asia, give the detail of the facility, show the best of their service and similiar like that. But, I think it is not enough. Maybe for JW Marriott, Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club is just a peripheral product, but with the comprehensive facility and 5-star service, Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club can be more better and get more attention in the premium service world. I suggest them, they should expand more in promotion budget for Marquiz Thermal Spa & Fitness Club because they are great but not many people know about it. They invest a lot in the high-end facilities but as I can see, only a little customer come to the fitness club, compare to the size and facilities of the fitness club.
They maybe have promotional tools to target corporate customer, as I can predict from the pricing differentiation strategy for corporate. But if they want to attract more high-income customer, they supposed to be more aggresive, by doing some promotion in high-level international school, or make a contract with top level company to give their board of manager (or high position staff), membership in the fitness club as incentive in work.