ARV Awards Dinner 2010

The Links team recently attended the 2010 ARV Awards Dinner, which was held at the stylish Crown Palladium on Friday 28th May. It was a highly successful night and a great opportunity to catch up with many of our clients.

Congatulations to many Links users who received a nomination for having an outstanding leisure facility or swim school such as Eltham Leisure Centre, Latrobe Leisure Morwell and South Yarra Sports.

Australian Fitness Expo & ASCTA National Conference

 Links Modular Solutions was proud to introduce the new kiosk.link and consult.link at both the Australian Fitness Expo (AFE) and the Australian Swim Teachers & Coaches Association (ASCTA) Conferences. These trade shows, held in Sydney and Queensland were our busiest so far, with our sales staff inundated with possible clients wanting more information! It was also great to catch up with existing clients, and introducing them to the new modules of Links. Overall, the two biggest fitness trade shows in Australia turned out to be a great success!

Links Modular Solutions re branding

With a new office, new staff and a range of new products to the market, Links has changed its look to conincide with a new time for the company. Continual growth of the Links client base, paves the way for an exciting time of development over the coming year. The addition of new staff members also paves the way for a new communication plan and improvde support. Regular newsletters will now be issued bi monthly, and the restructiure of support staffing has allowed for greater specalisation of support staff. The first newsletter will be issued on December 15th. More details to follow soon

City of Geraldton - Greenough Aquarena switches to Links

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The City of Geraldton-Greenough Aquarena boasts a large aquatic facility including an indoor 25m and leisure pool along with Hydro theraphy pool
and spa facilities, as well as an Outdoor 50m Pool and Water Polo pool. The facility operated by Council is home to many local sporting groups and
we are proud to have them change to Links Modular Solutions.

Links and the Latest  RFID Technology

In the past 2 years the fitness industry has started to adopt new technology for both convenience for their members and increasing the clubs bottom line. Industry leaders including “Recreation Health Clubs” “Fitness First”, “Victorian YMCA” and “Bayfit Leisure Centre” are organisations who have adopted the new RFID (proximity card) technology for their clubs.

The use of RFID has been around in various industries but not in the fitness industry as up until now it has been cost prohibitive. RFID cards have a memory chip in the card where industry software programs such as Links Modular Solutions can read write to and store information on them. 

If you do not want cards now you can also have rubber wrist bands, watches, key flops or a number of other alternatives. This gives greater opportunity for members to choose what they want to use and also greater promotional opportunity.

Some current key Benefits of the technology are as follows;

• The ability for easier full access control throughout the club or centre including males only allowed access into male change rooms
• Access control for membership lockers (no more keys or numbers to remember). Locker doors are alarmed if broken into and now you can assign them to a particular member if you wish.
• Money can be stored on the cards for internal purchases so that members do not have to bring in wallets etc. One thousand members placing one hundred dollars each on their membership card has proven to increase secondary spending while giving owners a nice slush fund waiting for the money to be spent.
• RFID can be used for purchases at vending machines freeing up staff at reception. Gloves, ear phones, health bars etc can all be placed in a vending machine.
• If you have swimming pools or do not want to use cards then you can use waterproof wrist bands that have all the same benefits. If you want to reward a member you can even give them a sports watch.  

“Ascot Vale Leisure centre has nearly 6000 members and has had the new RFID system for nearly 3 years now. In short, members and staff love the system it as it gives members easier and quicker access within the facility while giving us simpler and more control of them.” Cain Liddle (Group manager YMCA)

“We will have over One Million visitations this year and we wanted our members to have the easiest and quickest service without having to queue for any service. For this reason we have gone for RFID cards and the Links Modular Solutions Software.” Tim Hancock (Manager Bayfit Leisure Centre )

“At Recreation our philosophy does not deviate from “exceeding our member’s expectation for service”. With the RFID and the Links system we believe this helps us immensely in accomplishing this.  We love the idea of members being able to have cash on their membership card to make internal purchases simpler and easier and do have the worry about bringing in credit cards or wallets/purses. Now the member’s card can be used on vending machines and is fantastic for access control”. Joanne Russell (Director Recreation group)