Improving the quality of leisure and sports club

ENDecreasing physical activity encourages business organizations in the sports industry to establish more sports clubs and facilities, strengthen sports infrastructure. Organizations providing sports services face numerous challenges, which prompt decision-making aimed at encouraging customers to be interested in the services offered and to use them. Therefore, it is essential for all levels of management personnel and shareholders to remain creative, original, innovative, flexible, and most importantly – innovative (Howieson et al., 2019). Currently, an increasing number of studies show that the success of sports center management and maintaining competitiveness requires more effective and modern management (Álvarez – García et al., 2019). With increasing competition in the service sector of leisure and sports clubs, the satisfaction of customer expectations with the service becomes a priority. Managing a positive customer experience by increasing customer loyalty is an important aspect to stay in a competitive environment. Therefore, it is important that sports organizations dedicate time and effort to understand and assess the expectations and needs of their unique segment of customers when using the services of a sports club. Research problem question: What is the gap between customers' expectations and the actual quality of service, and what are the ways to address quality gaps? Research aim: To determine the quality of sports club services from the perspective of customers. Research objectives: define the factors influencing the quality of leisure and sports club services and improvement directions; evaluate the quality of leisure sports club services from the perspective of customer expectations and the actual service received. Research Methods: literature review and synthesis, quantitative research – questionnaire survey, statistical data analysis, descriptive statistical analysis.Conclusion: The service of the sports club is at a sufficiently high level, but quality improvement solutions are needed for modernization and expansion of premises and updating equipment. Additional services (nutritionist, masseuse, solarium service) and expand group workouts have been established. The study found that when assessing the quality of services in terms of tangibleness, reliability, certainty, responsiveness, empathy for clients, empathy is the lowest valued empathy. The ability of employees to implement the needs of visitors, the allocation of individual attention to the visitor, the solution of problems that have arisen in the problems encountered by the client, the implementation and qualification of special needs, the provision of equipment for services are evaluated with lower scores. Keywords: quality, service, leisure and sports club.