A model classified the main reason in 5,491 one- and two-star Google reviews of 256 high-review-count gyms and fitness clubs in eight U.S. metros.

SPRING HILL, FL, UNITED STATES, October 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A new study of 5,497 written one- and two-star Google reviews of 256 high-review-count gyms and fitness clubs finds that how the business is run was the model-classified main reason in 80.1 percent of the 5,491 reviews the main-reason pass labelled. The model classified the equipment and facility themselves as the main reason in 19.0 percent of the labelled reviews, and 0.9 percent were unclear.

The study was published by Sales Roadmap (salesroadmaps.com) and conducted by Kamyar Shah, a fractional COO and founder of World Consulting Group. It covers gyms and fitness clubs in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Tampa and Kansas City. The reviews are the written one- and two-star reviews of at least five words among the up-to-60 lowest-rated reviews retrieved per business, with review dates from 2010-01-25 to 2026-09-30.

Staff conduct was the most common theme. The model assigned the staff conduct label to 43.5 percent of the 5,497 reviews, cancellation process to 29.3 percent, billing the reviewer describes as unauthorized to 28.0 percent and sales and contract terms to 24.2 percent. These are themes a model assigned to what reviewers wrote, not verified events, and the shares overlap. The label Other carries 17.2 percent of the reviews, and its contents were not characterized.

The facility is in the reviews too. The model assigned at least one core-service label, covering equipment and the cleanliness of the facility, to 30.0 percent of the 5,497 reviews. Facility cleanliness was assigned to 20.2 percent and equipment condition to 19.2 percent.

One reviewer wrote: “I’ve been trying to cancel my membership for 3 months.” Another wrote that “they failed to tell me when I joined that they would be moving their location”.

“A gym owner can read these reviews as prompts to compare with their own records,” said Kamyar Shah. “Reviewers describe cancellation steps, charges they object to and information they say was not disclosed at joining.”

The number that keeps this honest. The 282 gyms and fitness clubs sampled hold 136,703 lifetime Google reviews between them. Of those, 11,587, or 8.5 percent, are one or two stars, and 84.2 percent are five stars. Of the 282, 256 have at least one review in the corpus. The study describes what the sampled written one- and two-star reviews in the corpus say. None of its figures is a share of members or customers.

How the study was done. Reviews were retrieved through the DataForSEO business data API. In each metro, up to 200 listings were screened and, after filters including a cap of two locations per brand, the 40 businesses with the most Google reviews were sampled. Thirty-eight businesses were excluded after their names were read, including climbing gyms, children’s programs and institutional facilities. A language model, Claude Haiku 4.5, classified the main reason, and a second model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, classified 200 of the same reviews. On the binary question of how the business is run against every other main reason, the two agreed on 94.5 percent, with a Cohen’s kappa of 0.841. No sample was checked against human coding. The study did not check any charge, contract or cancellation, and makes no finding about whether any charge was authorized.

“The study counts what reviewers wrote and how a model labelled it,” Shah said. “It does not judge whether any gym or any reviewer was right.”

The full study, including every theme, the method and its limitations, is available at https://salesroadmaps.com/gym-negative-reviews-study/

ABOUT Kamyar Shah is a Fractional COO, Fractional CMO, and Executive Coach, and the founder of World Consulting Group, with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth. He has led 650+ consulting engagements producing more than $300M in measurable results. More at https://kamyarshah.com and https://www.worldconsultinggroup.com

CONTACT Kamyar Shah World Consulting Group https://kamyarshah.com/contact/

KEYWORDS gym, online reviews, negative reviews, gym membership, fitness club operations, fractional COO, Google reviews, Kamyar Shah

kamyar Shah
World Consulting Group
+18135201687 ext.
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