The US Boutique Fitness Local Presence Index 2026

Someone moves to a new neighbourhood in January. They open their phone and type three words.

Fitness studio near me. What happens next commits them to a membership they will pay for every month for a year or more, at a business whose entire economics depend on that recurring commitment.

They will shortlist from three results — a name, a rating, a review count, a set of hours. And in most of the brands we audited, those three results might all belong to the same company and be impossible to tell apart.

So we read what they read.Fifty-three studios across nine US boutique fitness brands, seen exactly as a prospective member would see them. Seven of the nine had something structurally wrong — five studios published under five different name formats, a brand rendered in two capitalisations in one state, a studio publishing a town its own members never use. This report is what we found.

9 brands are in this study. They are anonymised, and the letters are deliberately not in rank order — so if you work in this industry, there is a reasonable chance one of these scorecards is yours and you will not know which until you reach the end.

If you run marketing or brand

Read this as a list of things you can fix. In a subscription business, the shortlist is the whole funnel, and most of these defects cost nothing but attention.

Most of what we found, you can fix yourself. Naming, hours, duplicates — a fortnight of attention and no budget. We tell you exactly what they are, free, and we would rather you just did it.
The part that does not stay fixed is review volume. Part Seven shows why: the same three bad reviews do twenty-five times more damage to a thin location than a rich one.
And every new location starts thin. Zero reviews beside siblings with hundreds, on a site you have just paid to open.

Full detail in Part Nine

If you run the company or a franchise network

Read this as a list of things to ask about. Your studios are competing with each other in search, and every new opening starts invisible.

This is externally assessable, with no cooperation required. Everything here was visible to any customer with a browser — which also makes it checkable before you buy something.
The repair cost is fixed and the exposure is not. Twenty-seven five-star reviews to recover from three bad ones, at any volume. Thin locations take the damage; everyone pays the same bill.
Nobody in the org chart owns it. It sits across marketing, operations and whoever opens new sites, which is why it appears on no dashboard.

Full detail in Part Nine

Who published this, and why you should factor that in

Amplispot sells digital presence management, including a review and listings product called ReviewSpot. We have an obvious commercial interest in a report concluding that local presence is mismanaged, and you should read it with that in mind.

What we have done to make it checkable anyway: the scoring formula and full deduction schedule are published, so you can recalculate any score yourself. Every figure came from public Google listings, so any claim can be independently verified. No brand was contacted before publication, paid for inclusion, or given advance sight of its score. ReviewSpot is not mentioned again in this document.

What follows

Three words in JanuaryWhy the listing decides who gets the trial class.
Six studios, one nameWhat density does to an undifferentiated estate.
How we lookedOur method, our selection, and what it cannot see.
Two clean estatesWhat the top of the table has in common.
A measuring stickFour components, 100 points, published in full.
The rankingAll 9 brands, scored.
What the ranking revealsWhere the real separation lives.
The scorecardsEvery brand, every defect.
What to do about itOne reading for marketing, another for the executive team.
Which brand are youWe will tell you privately.

Part One

Three words in January

Your listing is the whole top of the funnel.

Boutique fitness is a subscription business sold on a trial class. Everything downstream — the intro offer, the coach, the community — only matters if someone walks through the door. The listing decides who does.

What a prospective member judges

In under a minute a person forms a complete impression from four things: whether the name reads as a specific studio rather than a generic brand entry; whether the rating is above the two studios beside it; whether enough other people have been to make that rating mean anything; and whether the hours fit their life.

Each can be silently wrong. A studio can publish no opening hours at all. Six studios in one city can publish the identical name so a member cannot tell which one they visited. A brand can appear in two different capitalisations within one state.

Why this category has a specific problem

Density. These brands cluster studios deliberately — six in one city is normal, not exceptional. That is a sound property strategy and a disastrous listing strategy if every studio publishes the same name, because the estate then competes against itself for the same neighbourhood searches rather than against the independent gym down the road.

None of this is visible from inside. Nobody on your team searches for their own studio at nine at night. That is the entire reason this report contains anything you did not already know.

If studios cluster this tightly, the obvious question is whether members can tell them apart. Mostly, they cannot.

Next, Part TwoSix studios, one name

Part Two

Six studios, one name

Clustering is a property strategy. It is not a listing strategy.

Seven of the nine brands here publish at least some studios under the bare brand name with no neighbourhood, town or identifier.

Name formats in one estate

One brand publishes five studios under five different naming conventions. No two listings in the estate are constructed the same way.

7×

Review volume gap

Between the thinnest and richest estate — 39 reviews per studio at one brand, 261 at another.

7 of 9

With a structural defect

Naming failures, missing hours, a location mismatch, and in one case a review for an entirely different type of business landing on a studio listing.

Why franchise structure makes it worse

Most brands here operate through franchisees. The brand is centrally owned; the listing is created locally, often by whoever opened the studio, using whatever convention seemed sensible that day. Nobody at head office sees the estate as a whole, and nobody at studio level thinks it is their job. That split is exactly how five naming conventions end up inside one brand.

Nine brands are the subject of this study. Before the numbers, here is how we selected them and what our method cannot see.

Next, Part ThreeHow we looked

Part Three

How we looked

Everything here was visible to anyone with a browser.

No brand gave us data. None was contacted before publication. Every finding was equally available to the brand itself.

Step 1 · Find the studios

We searched each brand by brand name across the city or state where it is most heavily clustered, so that studios are compared against genuine local peers.

Step 2 · Record what the listing says

For every studio we captured the listing name, street address, telephone number, published opening hours, star rating, total review count, and the review text Google displays.

Step 3 · Compare studios against each other

Most defects only appear across a whole estate — a name that differs from every sibling, a shared contact route, a listing with no reviews at all. This is why internal teams miss them.

Step 4 · Score it mechanically

Components were calculated from the captured figures using the formulas and deduction schedule in Part Five. No judgement was applied afterwards.

What this method cannot see

We sampled one principal market per brand rather than a national census. Every brand here operates far more studios than shown. Per-studio figures are unaffected; totals are floors, not counts.
We sampled one market per brand. Several of these brands operate hundreds of studios nationally; this is a window, not a census.
A single point in time. Ratings and listings drift, and some defects may already be fixed.
We did not measure owner response rate. The public data source does not expose owner replies as a retrievable field, so rather than estimate it, we left it out.
We hold no internal data from any brand.

Two brands in this study have clean estates. What separates them from the rest is not what we expected.

Next, Part FourTwo clean estates

Part Four

Two clean estates

The two brands with no defects are not the two best-rated.

Two brands in this study carry no structural defect at all. Neither has the highest member rating. Both name every studio by neighbourhood, and both publish complete and internally consistent hours.

That is the argument of this report in one line. Sentiment does not separate this category — every brand here sits between 4.19 and 4.97. The separation comes from volume and from whether the estate is correctly constructed.

What the bottom of the table has in common

The two lowest-scoring brands both carry multiple naming and hours defects, and both cluster heavily in a single market — which is precisely the condition under which undifferentiated listings do the most damage. One has six studios in one city publishing the identical name. The other has inconsistent naming, a studio publishing default hours seven days a week, and a reviewer referring to it by a business name that appears nowhere on the listing.

Two findings we are reporting carefully and not scoring

On one brand's listing we found a review describing an entirely different type of business — evidence that reviews are landing on the wrong profile and nobody is catching it. We have scored that as a listing-integrity defect, because it is one.

Separately, on another brand, a reviewer publicly alleges that a different studio of the same brand in the same city purchases five-star reviews. We cannot assess that claim, we are not repeating the detail, and we have not scored it. We mention it only because it sits unanswered on a public listing where prospective members read it, and because platform action against incentivised reviews would fall on the brand rather than the individual studio.

That is one component of four. Here is the full measure, published so you can recalculate your own score.

Next, Part FiveA measuring stick

Part Five

A measuring stick

Four things, 100 points, no black box.

An index you cannot audit is a marketing device, not a measurement.

Component 01

Review density

Reviews per studio. Count is a ranking input in its own right, not just a confidence signal for humans. Log-scaled.

35 points

Component 02

Listing integrity

Whether the estate is correctly represented. Starts at full marks and loses points for each defect found.

35 points

Component 03

Rating

Volume-weighted average across the estate, scaled 3.0 to 4.9.

20 points

Component 04

Consistency

The gap between the best and worst studio. A wide spread usually means nobody is watching at studio level.

10 points

The deduction schedule, in full

Integrity begins at 35 points. Each defect costs the following:

Acquired or renamed studios not migrated to the group brand−10
Listing names inconsistent, or missing a location qualifier−8
Live listing with no reviews, or no published hours−8
Identical review text appearing across multiple listings−8
Corporate headquarters listed as a public destination−6
Shared national contact number across the estateobserved, not scored
Unusually wide rating variance between studiosreflected in consistency

Applied to 53 studios, that measure produces a table that looks very little like a ranking by size.

Next, Part SixThe ranking

Part Six

The ranking

All 9 brands, scored.

#	Brand	Studios	Reviews	Per studio	Rating	Defects	Score
1	Brand B	6	1,568	261	4.60	0	92
2	Brand F	6	679	113	4.97	1	89
3	Brand I	6	1,031	172	4.88	1	82
4	Brand C	6	677	113	4.95	3	71
5	Brand E	5	393	79	4.82	2	70
6	Brand A	6	595	99	4.76	2	67
7	Brand G	6	235	39	4.19	1	65
8	Brand D	6	706	118	4.61	3	61
9	Brand H	6	363	60	4.64	3	53

Rating tells you almost nothing here

Every brand in this study rates between 4.19 and 4.97 — and the brand with the highest rating finishes second, while the brand in first place is mid-table on sentiment. What separates the top from the bottom is review volume and whether the estate is correctly constructed.

Two variables drive nearly all of that separation. Neither has much to do with quality of care.

Next, Part SevenWhat the ranking reveals

Part Seven

What the ranking reveals

A sevenfold volume gap, and almost no sentiment gap.

Finding one: review volume

From 39 reviews per studio to 261.

Brand B261

Brand I172

Brand D118

Brand F113

Brand C113

Brand A99

Brand E79

Brand H60

Brand G39

A sevenfold gap between the thinnest and richest estate. In a subscription business this compounds: volume feeds local ranking independently of score, so a brand at the bottom of this chart loses the shortlist to a lower-rated competitor with more members on record — and loses it every month, on every new prospect.

Why review volume is insurance, not marketing

Take a location sitting at 4.6 stars. In one difficult month it receives three one-star reviews — a staffing gap, a bad week, one genuinely poor experience shared by a family or a group. Nothing unusual.

What that costs depends entirely on how many reviews were already on file.

Reviews already on file	Rating after	Drop	Five-star reviews to recover
40	4.35	−0.25	27
100	4.50	−0.10	27
250	4.56	−0.04	27
500	4.58	−0.02	27
1,000	4.59	−0.01	27

Two things in that table matter more than anything else in this report.

The same three reviews do twenty-five times more damage at a thin location than a rich one. And the recovery cost — 27 five-star reviews — is identical at every volume. It does not get cheaper because you are large. It is fixed by arithmetic.

So a thin estate takes visible hits and pays the same repair bill. That is why volume behaves like insurance rather than marketing: you cannot prevent bad reviews, you can only dilute them, and dilution has to be running before the bad month, not after it. Brands here range from 39 to 261 reviews per studio. In a subscription business, a visible rating drop costs you the trial bookings that feed every month's new memberships.

Finding two: ratings

From 4.19 to 4.97.

Brand F4.97

Brand C4.95

Brand I4.88

Brand E4.82

Brand A4.76

Brand H4.64

Brand D4.61

Brand B4.60

Brand G4.19

4.2★4.6★5.0★

Almost the entire category sits above 4.5. To a prospective member choosing between two studios, that difference is invisible. This is what a category looks like where the product is good and the differentiation has to come from somewhere else.

Below is every brand, with its component scores and each defect we found, described generically.

Next, Part EightThe scorecards

Part Eight

The scorecards

Brand by brand.

Brand B

92/100Strong

6studios

1,568reviews

261per studio

4.60★rating

0defects

Review density34/35

Listing integrity35/35

Rating15/20

Consistency9/10

CleanNo structural defects found in our sweep.

Brand F

89/100Strong

6studios

679reviews

113per studio

4.97★rating

1defects

Review density25/35

Listing integrity35/35

Rating20/20

Consistency9/10

Solicitation claimA public review at one studio alleges that another studio of the same brand in the same city purchases five-star reviews. We cannot assess the claim and are not repeating the detail — but it sits unanswered where prospects read it.

Brand I

82/100Strong

6studios

1,031reviews

172per studio

4.88★rating

1defects

Review density29/35

Listing integrity27/35

Rating18/20

Consistency7/10

NamingThe brand name is rendered in two different capitalisations across one state's estate, and no studio carries a location qualifier.

Brand C

71/100Fair

6studios

677reviews

113per studio

4.95★rating

3defects

Review density25/35

Listing integrity17/35

Rating19/20

Consistency10/10

Location mismatchOne studio publishes a town name that its own reviewers never use, consistently referring to a different town instead.
NamingNaming is inconsistent — one studio carries a town suffix, the other five publish only the bare brand.
Thin volumeOne studio carries fewer than twenty reviews against a network median above a hundred.

Brand E

70/100Fair

5studios

393reviews

79per studio

4.82★rating

2defects

Review density21/35

Listing integrity22/35

Rating18/20

Consistency9/10

NamingFive studios publish under five different name formats. No two listings in the estate are constructed the same way.
Opening hoursSome studios publish 24-hour access and others restricted hours, with nothing on the listing explaining the difference.

Brand A

67/100Fair

6studios

595reviews

99per studio

4.76★rating

2defects

Review density24/35

Listing integrity22/35

Rating17/20

Consistency5/10

NamingFive of six studios publish under the bare brand name with no location qualifier.
Opening hoursOne studio publishes no opening hours at all despite a substantial review count.

Brand G

65/100Fair

6studios

235reviews

39per studio

4.19★rating

1defects

Review density14/35

Listing integrity35/35

Rating9/20

Consistency7/10

Thin volumeThe thinnest estate in this study by review count, in one of the most competitive fitness markets we sampled.

Brand D

61/100Fair

6studios

706reviews

118per studio

4.61★rating

3defects

Review density25/35

Listing integrity14/35

Rating15/20

Consistency6/10

NamingAll six studios in one city publish under the bare brand name with no neighbourhood qualifier.
Opening hoursOne studio publishes no opening hours at all despite a healthy review count.
Wrong-business reviewA review describing an entirely different type of business appears on one studio's listing — reviews are landing on the wrong profile and nobody is catching it.

Brand H

53/100Weak

6studios

363reviews

60per studio

4.64★rating

3defects

Review density19/35

Listing integrity12/35

Rating15/20

Consistency7/10

NamingNaming is inconsistent across the estate — some studios carry a neighbourhood, others publish only the bare brand.
Opening hoursOne studio publishes identical hours seven days a week, contradicting every sibling studio and reading as an untouched default setting.
Legacy brandA reviewer refers to one studio by an entirely different business name, indicating a prior brand never reconciled on the listing.

What you take from this depends entirely on which side of the table you sit on.

Next, Part NineWhat to do about it

Part Nine

What to do about it

Two audiences should read this differently.

For marketing and brand

You cannot prevent bad reviews. You can only dilute them. The table in Part Seven is the whole commercial argument: the same three complaints do twenty-five times more damage to a thin location, and the repair cost is identical either way. Dilution only works if it is already running when the bad month arrives.
Listings decay. They are not fixed once. Profiles get merged, the public suggests edits Google accepts, staff change hours, new locations arrive unclaimed. Everything in this report is a snapshot of an estate that drifts, which is why monitoring beats a one-off cleanup.
Every new location starts at zero and stays exposed for months. That is the top row of the Part Seven table, on a site you have just spent heavily to open — and it recurs with every opening rather than being solved once.
Your average conceals your worst location. Nobody sees location-level variance by watching a brand number, and the gaps we found in this study are wide enough to matter.
Your studios are competing with each other. Identical names across one city means undifferentiated listings cannibalising the same neighbourhood searches. Location qualifiers are one of the few direct levers left on local placement.
A studio with no published hours loses the impulse visit. Boutique fitness is bought on impulse more than any category we have audited. A listing that cannot answer 'are they open now' does not get the click.
Volume ranks you independently of score. A 4.5 studio with 260 reviews routinely appears above a 4.9 with 39. Several brands here are losing placement to competitors they out-perform.
Brand consistency dies at the listing layer first. One brand in this study renders its own name in two different capitalisations within a single state.
These defects are invisible from inside. Nobody on your team searches for their own studio, which is why five naming conventions can coexist in one estate.

For the executive team and franchise network

This is a recurring exposure, not a project. A cleanup fixes today's estate. It does not stop profiles drifting, does not protect the next opening, and does not tell you which location slipped last month. Whoever signs off on a one-off fix should understand what it does and does not buy.
Thin locations are fragile in a way the average hides. Part Seven quantifies it: three bad reviews move a thin location twenty-five times more than a rich one, and cost the same twenty-seven five-star reviews to repair either way.
Nobody in the org chart owns it. Listing and review data sits across marketing, operations and whoever opens new sites. In most organisations that means no owner, no dashboard, and attention only after a complaint reaches somebody senior.
Every new opening starts invisible. A new studio begins at zero reviews next to incumbents with hundreds, and loses local placement for months on a unit you have just funded. That drag compounds with every studio you add.
Nobody owns the listing in a franchise model. The brand is centrally owned; the profile is created locally by whoever opened the studio. No owner, no dashboard, no standard.
Clustering multiplies the cost of getting this wrong. Six studios in one city is a sound property strategy. Six identically-named listings in one city is an own goal, and the two are not the same decision.
Incentivised review claims are a brand-level risk. One estate here carries a public allegation of purchased reviews at a sibling studio. Platform enforcement against that behaviour lands on the brand, not the franchisee.
It is cheap and externally verifiable. One of very few acquisition levers with a hard before-and-after that any member, franchisee or competitor can check.

If any of the 9 scorecards looked uncomfortably familiar, there is a straightforward way to find out.

Next, Part TenWhich brand are you

Part Ten

Which brand are you

We will tell you. Privately, and at no cost.

The letters are not in rank order, and that is on purpose.

Brands in this study are anonymised. We hold a private key mapping each letter to its brand, along with a verification code that appears nowhere in this document.

Email us from a company domain and we will confirm your letter, quote your verification code back to you, and send the full underlying detail for your estate — every studio, every defect, named and specific. No charge, no meeting required, and we will not add you to anything.

audit@amplispot.com
Subject: FLPI 2026 — [your brand name]

We will not confirm any other brand's identity to you, and we will not confirm yours to anyone else. If you believe a defect we recorded is wrong, tell us — corrections are published in the next edition with the correction noted.