New technologies are being developed and integrated into many facets of our everyday lives at lightning speed, oftentimes without us even realizing it. Here, we’ll look at new ways technologies are helping recreation, sports and fitness facilities and organizations improve their operations, aiding administrative staff, maintenance workers, patrons and more, while ideally driving growth and reducing operational costs.
The Houston suburb of Pearland, Texas, has more than 126,000 residents. Their parks and recreation department oversees a variety of facilities, parks and athletic fields, along with offering myriad programming options and volunteer opportunities, which all makes for a lot of moving parts. “Our department’s vision is connecting community through exceptional experiences,” said Andre Walker, operations support coordinator for the department.
The city was an early adopter of parks and recreation management software, and has been using the technology for more than two decades. A few years ago, they switched software companies, and Walker said the new solution “has been transformative in how we connect with and serve the community. It provides a seamless experience for patrons to register for classes, lessons and events, purchase memberships, or make facility rental requests.”
From an operational perspective, Walker said the software also reduces manual processes for staff and improves the accuracy of their records. “Whether it’s tracking participation, processing payments or managing waitlists, the system ensures that our staff can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time focusing on customer service.”
Walker said they’ve also introduced the Pearland in Motion app, powered by their software solution, which has “greatly improved accessibility to our services. Our analytics show that most customers access our offerings through their phones, so the app helps us meet them where they are,” increasing participation across multiple programs. Additionally, Walker created an interactive guided demo of the app, allowing customers to view their digital membership keytag, check schedules, and browse, register and withdraw from activities.
And while Walker said the software itself is straightforward, they also use a tool that “creates clear, step-by-step guides whenever customers need additional help.” The tool is also “used internally for staff training, administrative tasks such as invoice processing, updating account details, and documenting SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for daily operations.”
The management software comes with built-in system reports, and Walker said he’s also developed custom reports, allowing for better-informed decisions. For example, usage reports were created, tracking how many customers visit the rec center and natatorium on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. “These insights help us adjust facility operating times and respond to usage trends or customer requests,” ensuring that hours and services align with community desires.
“I’ve also built financial reports to track inventory and merchandise sales, sponsorship sales and even staff sales for leaderboards,” said Walker, helping to monitor performance, recognize staff achievements and identify opportunities for revenue growth. And he’s created specialized reports for third-party program memberships, including SilverSneakers and RenewActive, which reimburse the department based on member usage. “By tailoring reports to meet each provider’s requirements, we’ve streamlined the reimbursement process and ensured accuracy in our monthly uploads.”
The solution also provides tools to manage rental contracts, which Walker said has served them well, “giving our staff the flexibility to create and adjust contracts as needed.” And for more complex rental needs—such as managing large sports organizations that require multi-day, multi-location reservations—Walker said they complement their software with an online platform for managing facilities, designed for specialized rentals, allowing customers to submit comprehensive requests in a single step. “By pairing (these), we’re able to deliver both the flexibility our staff needs and the advanced functionality our customers expect.”
The software also integrates with Pearland’s GIS database to verify residency, as many programs have resident and non-resident rates. “It also helps us understand who’s participating, where participants live, and which parts of the community are underrepresented,” said Walker. “This data is critical in making our programs accessible and equitable for all.”
There are also software solutions for connecting office staff with field maintenance teams. Kevin Gruzewski works for a company offering parks and recreation maintenance management software, for streamlining maintenance planning, conducting field inspections, managing inventory and generating actionable reports, “where all levels of staff can communicate about the maintenance and operational needs of an agency. When everyone communicates on the same platform, it’s harder for things to get overlooked,” said Gruzewski.
Staff can create work requests that get funneled to the appropriate supervisor, who assigns the request to the appropriate person. Once the work is completed, a notification gets sent to the requester. Work orders can be generated through the software, explained Gruzewski, so if the recreation department needs a specific setup for a special event, for instance, they create a work request that alerts the maintenance manager, who assigns the task to their team. “After finishing the task, the recreation staff gets a notification that the work is completed, so they can continue preparing for their program.”
Gruzewski added that tasks can include notes, photos or digital files to provide maintenance staff with as much information as possible to get the job done correctly. “Supervisors can also schedule recurring preventive maintenance tasks and inspections. No more searching text messages, voicemails, emails—all the information is in one place.”
The software allows for unlimited customized inspection templates, so teams can create inspections for playgrounds, facilities, equipment, vehicles and more. Inspections can also be site-specific, such as unique inspections for each playground.
“Inspections can be scheduled at desired intervals to ensure nothing gets overlooked,” said Gruzewski. Inspection records are available on the asset’s dashboard and can be downloaded for risk management and other interested parties. When an inspection item gets marked unsatisfactory, supervisors are alerted on their dashboard, and they can assign a task to address the issue. “The inspection report also tracks the related work requests and their status.”
Administrators can set the amount and location of inventory, and when maintenance staff complete a task, they can report the inventory used, allowing the agency to track replacement parts, cleaning supplies and other goods. Additionally, staff can track the amount of time assets like vehicles and equipment are used during tasks. “Recording usage hours can be helpful for preventive maintenance planning and knowing what resources get used where,” said Gruzewski, helping with “more accurate planning and budgeting.”
As far as reporting tools, Gruzewski said their system offers several standard reports that display task and labor data in various formats. “The customized report engine can also pinpoint data by choosing the report format and a variety of custom filters. Teams have additional planning resources with task status reports, asset replacement schedules, and task standard calculations. The system can be configured to help capture the data that’s most important to your agency.”
Gwen McEwen is co-founder of a company offering a cloud-based staff scheduling and workforce management platform designed for the parks and recreation industry. The system allows for emails, texts and push messaging, which employees can access via their phone, tablet or desktop.
The platform has many options available for shift swapping, as this can be complex in recreation, according to McEwen. “Employees can post their full shift or part of their shift, and also post their shift for someone. When picking up a shift, employees can request the whole shift or part of the shift.” Managers decide how to set up their shift board and the parameters, and they typically determine who gets a shift, “either due to seniority or current hours already worked that week.
“We have a very robust timesheet module that can be extracted to any payroll system,” continued McEwen. “Due to the significant number of customers who are unionized, our timesheet module takes care of shift differentials, premiums, overtime, and allows you to pay down to the work assignment level.” Work assignments are added to shifts to inform staff what they’re doing during that shift.
Often in unionized environments, staff are paid different rates during a shift, said McEwen. “For example, a lifeguard shift can be filled with swim lessons, aquafit lessons and guarding. They can be paid differently for each of these assignments, and in (our platform) those different rates flow through to the timesheets.”
Staff credentials can be “baked in” to the system, so when assigning staff a shift, if their required credentials are expiring/expired it will tell you. “In the case of lifeguards, this is critical because you don’t want someone on deck who isn’t qualified.” Additionally, the system will send out expiration reminders.
Each department within a facility can have its own version of the platform, which McEwen called a big differentiator. “For example, aquatics may want a four-hour lead time to send out automated urgent messaging of posted shifts, but the front desk would like 24 hours. All the settings and rules that fire for your department can be customized to your needs.”
The use of artificial intelligence is growing exponentially across all types of business operations. Tony Small is co-founder and CEO of a company that provides a “sales and support AI agent,” helping fitness, recreation and sports organizations automate their interactions. “Facilities get overwhelmed with calls, emails and chats about basic things like hours, registration or pricing,” said Small. “(Our system) takes those interactions off the staff’s plate. The AI can answer phones, chats, emails and texts 24/7, freeing staff to focus on what really matters: the in-person customer experience.” If a caller asks for a person, or the AI recognizes something complex, “it smoothly transfers the interaction to any number of phone numbers based on the scenario.”
And while answering inbound calls is one thing, outbound calls are what drives revenue, said Small. “(The system) can run follow-up campaigns, remind members about sign-up deadlines, re-engage cold leads, remind people about past dues and more,” with inbound and outbound email, live chat and texting all being part of the system. “And because we handle all mediums of communication, our clients aren’t stuck with multiple vendors each covering a different channel.”
Every interaction is tracked, according to Small, and facilities get communication analytics, with many connecting the system to other customer relationship management (CRM) systems for deeper reporting. “That visibility helps managers understand what customers are asking and where staff time is best spent.”
Small said the ROI is clear: “Arena Sports saw a 10X return after rolling (the platform) out across five facilities. They automated 60% of inquiries and cut labor costs by 15%. Golds Gym DC Metro captured 9.9X more leads after installation, simply by ensuring every call and message was answered. These aren’t small gains; they’re the difference between missed opportunities and real growth.”
New technologies have always been prevalent in the aquatics industry, with recent innovations including intelligent pool and building control systems; AI systems to monitor pool equipment; automated recordkeeping with pool management software; robotic pool cleaners; AI-powered drowning detection; and smart pool covers.
Kristin Strickland is customer support and training director, and Colby Stratman is product manager for a Pasadena, Calif.-based company offering a software and hardware-based solution for managing commercial pools. The solution allows for communicating with industry-leading chemical controllers that automatically feed and adjust chemicals while monitoring water chemistry readings, according to Stratman. “We talk to most pool chemical controllers and give operators remote access to important water safety data that they can access at any time on a PC or their mobile device.”
Internet of Things (IoT) sensors are a core part of the platform. “We integrate with many water quality sensors like pH, ORP, free chlorine and conductivity in addition to other sensors in the pump room like flow temperature and chemical inventory,” said Stratman. Alarms are set up to notify operators when something needs attention. “We allow full customization of notifications across all sensor readings”
“Many aquatic facilities can be stretched thin when it comes to staffing, and remote monitoring is a gamechanger that helps them stay on top of water safety,” said Strickland. “We’ve also integrated an AI assistant that looks at your specific sensor readings and gives you complete troubleshooting steps and converses with you about your pool.” She said that water consumption monitoring is another valuable feature of the solution, as “Many facilities don’t realize how much water loss can occur through unnoticed leaks or inefficiencies.”
Stratman said there’s an industry trend toward more modern solutions around automation, monitoring and troubleshooting due to factors including staffing shortages, increasing health department regulations, the need to reduce liability, and increasing costs of chemicals, water and energy. “Properties need valuable data that provides them actionable insights to solve real problems before they turn into larger safety or financial issues.” He said they’ve found their solution reaches its full potential “when the property embraces it as a partnership. A great example is the YMCA of Greater Boston.”
Established in 1851, the YMCA of Greater Boston is America’s first YMCA, now boasting more than 20 aquatic facilities serving thousands of community members. And when Jeremy Stiles assumed a leadership role there as vice president of risk management, he encountered many challenges with the pools, stemming from aging infrastructure and inconsistent equipment across multiple properties.
Needing a reliable way to ensure water safety, streamline operations and reduce manual reporting errors, Stiles led a system-wide upgrade pairing their water treatment controllers with the platform described above. “(The solution) has helped us reduce pool closures, troubleshoot faster, and improve both training and documentation for our employees, all while giving us the confidence to lead by example within the YMCA network,” he said.
As technologies are continually evolving, new versions and updates are a constant. McEwen said they’re often adding features at customers requests, “because we only have one customer type so what one customer wants, chances are 80% that others would like it too.”
Gruzewski said their customers have offered many great ideas, and described a supervisor who wanted to assign tasks that staff could pull daily, based on their availability. “From that idea, we developed Bucket Tasks. The supervisor assigns a task to a ‘bucket’ and gives selected staff access to it. Staff pull a task from that bucket when they need something to do.”
Several years ago, James City County, Va., home to nearly 81,000 people, switched to a new recreation management software provider, and Robbie Belch, information systems technician with the parks and recreation department, said it’s been a welcome upgrade. One feature is a community portal, allowing other jurisdictions that also have the software to “ask questions, share ideas and brainstorm for new features. It also serves a direct link to the software development team, so if one jurisdiction is having the same issue as others, we’re all notified in real-time to get status updates and resolutions.”
As far as other tech, Belch said they use auto counters at frequently used parks and an app to share real-time field status updates on weather closures, maintenance, etc. “We use QR codes frequently for marketing and are in the process of offering guest Wi-Fi services at some locations.”
Back in Pearland, Walker said they have public Wi-Fi available at member-based facilities and a community center. QR codes are “used for direct access to the Pearland in Motion app and program guide, and for services like racquetball court reservations and department surveys.”
And a self-service kiosk was recently introduced at their rec center, “allowing our members to check into group exercise classes. In the future we plan to expand kiosk functions to include membership and swim pass purchases, further supporting self-service convenience.” RM