LeisureCard sales jump as prices drop

Not clear if more using facilities

Saskatoon LeisureCard sales jumped this September after prices were cut, but it’s not yet clear if new users are flocking to the city’s seven leisure centres.

The city sold roughly 1,700 LeisureCards this September, compared to 1,250 in September 2014. While October numbers are not yet available, Lynne Lacroix, the city’s director of recreation and sport, told council’s planning committee on Monday that those sales will likely also be higher than from the same time last year.

Lacroix cautioned that an increase of 450 card sales does not mean 450 new leisure centre users. Some new LeisureCard holders could be leisure centre users who previously used bulk tickets to access the centres and have now switched to LeisureCards when they became a cheaper option. Data on bulk ticket sales for the fall is not yet available.

As of Sept. 1, adult LeisureCards were reduced to $45 a month from $75 and monthly family LeisureCards were cut to $90 from $150. The move, approved by council this summer, is supposed to bring in 36,000 more admissions and generate an additional $1.1 million in revenue by 2018.

That extra revenue won’t be seen this year. Leisure centres are projected to bring in $370,000 below budgeted revenues for 2015.

Despite this, Randy Grauer, the city’s general manager of community services, told councillors that the city administration still expects to meet its cost-recovery targets over time.

The city aims to recover 65 per cent of the costs of operating its leisure centres. While rental programs and children’s registered programs — such as swimming lessons — consistently meet this goal, admission and drop-in programs have fallen short for years.

Last year, admissions covered just 56 per cent of the cost of operating leisure centres. That was down from 59 per cent in 2013 and 63 per cent in 2012.

Over the summer, councillors asked whether the city could offer a lower price for patrons who just use the exercise or weight rooms as opposed to the pool. The city administration expressed reluctance to do this on the heels of changing LeisureCard prices, warning that such a move would require investments in staff and technology to make sure leisure centre users only go where they pay to go.

“I want to be clear: I’m not being dismissive of this very good question, because our customers do raise it from time to time,” Grauer told customers. “We just want to see how the impact of our new pricing strategy unfolds for some period of time before we revisit this.”