Edinburgh Sucks! | Sheraton’s One Spa cheaper than Edinburgh Leisure

City Council

Sheraton’s One Spa cheaper than Edinburgh Leisure

By The Basa ⋅ April 11, 2008 ⋅

What you won’t find with Edinburgh Leisure but will with One Spa

Proof today emerged today that the world famous, ultra-luxurious and chic One Spa at the city’s Sheraton Hotel is cheaper than using Porty Swimming Pool to keep fit if you have children. It also brings into huge disrepute the council and their appointed overseers of council funds at Edinburgh Liesure which is being run as a charity and pays no VAT.

Serious questions must now be asked at extremely high levels. For example, how come a private business can run a hugely superior facility with many times the amenities at a profit and Edinburgh Liesure provides run down buildings and equipment, depends on handouts from the city council and still manages to make massive losses. Their Chief Executive then runs to the Evening Chip Paper and tells them he wants to spend many tens of thousands of pounds (his words not ours) on a celebration that is supposedly celebrating success - his idea of success is a lot different to ours.

We took a fairly typical scenario. A mother with two small children who wants to go swimming one session a week and also go for a relaxing turkish bath one session per week. To keep the kids in shape and make sure there is no obesity then one visit per week to gym nippers for the kids.

With the special discounted price for Leisure Card (cost £48 annually) holders this comes for the swimming and leaving the children in the creche for up to 1 1/2 hours to £10.80. For the turkish bath it comes to a total of £14.20. Without the Liesure Card the costs would be £14.20 and £17 respectively. For the kids in the gym nippers the cost is £3.65 each kid which is £7.

This brings this mother’s weekly total to £32 and for a year that adds up to £1,664 + the £48 for the leisure card which comes to £1,712.

Edinburgh Liesure and the Council have priced themselves out of the market - just what nuLabour wanted when they turned this department into a loss-making business full of their cronies at the top with their noses firmly in the trough and of course Jenny Dawg’s new FibDem/Scottish Nose Picker administration are showing daily that they just do not have a clue.

Customers, especially parents, who use their facilities regularly will probably find, as we did with our typical example that they are a lot cheaper going private - in fact not just going private but going to the best of the best. If the mother above went with her two children to the best award-winning health club in the city, One Spa at the Sheraton Hotel, she would save a massive £512 - almost 30%. In fact, if she signs up at the moment with a current offer they will save £612 about 32%. Other perks with going upmarket to save money include free car-parking for every visit for up to 3 hours and the children will be better off as well because they will be looked after at the childrens club in the Spa from Monday to Friday from 3pm to 5pm and on a Saturday morning. Membership costs to One Spa is considered measly compared to Edinburgh Liesure at only £100 per month and for that £100 you get a whole lot of other perks including:

Amazing up-to-date Gym facilities
Fitness & Kinesis Studios
A beautiful swimming pool surrounded by light and space
The Thermal Suite
Outdoor and Indoor Hydropool
Steam Room
Aroma Grotto
Tropical Rain Shower
Cold Fog Shower
Tepidarium
Free Drinking Fountains

and if you join before the end of the month you also get:

First Month membership complimentary
Two complimentary guest passes
One Spa members also receive discounted spa treatments, preferential booking, fantastic food & beverage offers, plus many more exclusive benefits worth over £400.
An amazing and reasonably priced menu in the Spa Cafe

Why can’t the city offer the exact same package as One Spa and a comparable facility, cut their prices by 30% and start paying money back into the council coffers rather than living on handouts. It is not as though the front-line staff are being paid huge amounts of money. Creche assistants earn around £6 per hour - about the same as burger-flippers in McDonalds. Maybe Councillor “Gorby” Bridgman can go back and look at the figures he was supplied by Edinburgh Liesure and start asking the question of why any creche’s across the city were closed and why Edinburgh Liesure had the cheek to up creche prices by over 100% at the beginning of this month.

The management of Edinburgh Liesure should now be sacked and competent people brought in to run the company. If the council want to run our services as businesses then the above information has shown that they have the wrong people in the job.

The other problem is that why are the councillors whose noses are firmly troughbound not doing this research themselves and asking their officials the right questions. It simply took EdSucks one telephone call and then a visit to a website. Maybe the problem is that councillors can’t stand the truth.

More Info: One Spa
Portobello Swimming Pool Prices