Every hotel GM and every multifamily developer eventually asks me a version of the same question: does spending more on the gym let us charge more for the room, or the unit?
Fair question. Somebody has to justify the line item, and "it'll just feel nicer" won't survive a budget review.
It's still the wrong question to be asking.
Picture a guest with five hotel tabs open in the same three-block radius, all roughly the same price. At that point, the properties have mostly converged — comparable lobbies, comparable rooftop bars, comparable pool shots on comparable Instagram grids.
The fitness space is frequently the one area that hasn't converged yet.
Nobody picks a hotel because of the gym. But in a lineup where everything else already matches, it can be the one detail that still separates you from the property next door.
In an apartment building, this isn't a room-rate conversation at all — it's a renewal conversation. Tenants rarely re-sign because the monthly number felt exactly fair. They re-sign because moving somewhere else would mean giving up something they actually use.
A gym that's genuinely part of someone's routine turns "moving out" from an errand into a loss.
If a rate premium ever shows up because of the gym, it's a byproduct of that retention effect — not the reason to build it.
Stop trying to isolate what the gym adds to the rent roll or the ADR. That number is nearly impossible to pull apart from everything else driving a booking or a lease renewal, and chasing it usually leads to underfunding the one amenity that could've actually set the building apart.
Ask this instead: what does it cost you when your gym looks and functions exactly like the one three buildings over?
That's the number that should be in the pro forma. It almost never is.