It seems the word on everyone’s lips at the moment is beacons. Partly because it’s fun to say, but more so because these simple devices are being tipped as a potential gamechanger for the leisure industry.

Beacons are small, low-cost pieces of computer hardware that use battery-friendly, low-energy Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts directly to smartphones or tablets. They can sense the location of a visitor to with a few inches, enabling marketing messages to be tailored to precise stages of that person’s journey around an establishment.

With the leisure industry – spa and health clubs in particular – notoriously bad at driving secondary spend, the arrival of a targeted marketing service which can gather users’ data and instantly offer promotions based on user preferences couldn’t come sooner. If, as a practical example, a gym member is reading a group fitness schedule located outside a studio, an app could automatically ask if they’d like to see what the class looks like and share a video overview, followed by a link to a booking platform. Or, after a session, users can be informed of special offers on smoothies and health drinks in a site's cafe.

The technology – which has already been applied at visitor attractions to offer added information on exhibits – is being heralded as ‘the next big thing’ for leisure and retail businesses. Beacons featured in a recent Mintel trends report and were the subject of an in-depth Health Club Management feature by fitness entrepreneur Bryan O’Rourke.

According to O’Rourke, Fitness First and other leading health club operators are now all evaluating the potential of beacons, and they are not alone. BI Intelligence projections from Business Insider predict that by the end of 2015, about 32 per cent of retail locations owned by the top 100 retailers in the United States will have deployed beacon hardware and software. By the end of 2016, this percentage is expected to have jumped to 85 per cent of retail locations.

“Although NFC and to some extent radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology have made similar promises in the past, the widespread adoption of smartphones and the fact that mobile devices are playing a larger role in the consumer experience means that beacon technology has a good chance to go mainstream in the next few years,” writes O’Rourke.

“But for the implementation of beacons to be a success, club operators need customers who want to use them; the main barrier to the potential success of beacon technology is that customers have to voluntarily download and install a smartphone app for it to work.”

Meanwhile, the Mintel report forecasts that this will not be so much of a problem for businesses wanting to connect with the much-vaunted millennial market. 16-34-year-olds are expected to be early adopters of beacon interaction, with one third of UK millennials indicating that they would allow brands they like access to their location for relevant offers.

“Beacons have the power to bring destinations alive, especially in The Netherlands, where the entire village of Grou has been connected with 100 beacons,” notes the Mintel report.

“Meanwhile, Exterion Media is trialling beacon technology on 500 London buses to send passengers location-relevant marketing alerts.”

To read Bryan O’Rourke’s feature on the potential of beacons – from the October issue of Health Club Management – click here.

Mintel's Europe 16 trends report available to download free of charge here.