Building water confidence in young swimmers is at the heart of the water leisure offering at Guildford Spectrum Leisure Complex. The extensive renovation of the children’s pool and facilities at centre in Surrey has not only boosted the venue’s appeal, but also led to a two-fold increase in visitors.
The ÂŁ217,000 project was completed just prior to Christmas 2014 and in the following period, from January to July 2015, visitor numbers were up by a whopping 102 per cent compared with the same period in 2014. Similarly, attendance at the Toddler Splash sessions increased by 121 per cent in the first half of this year, welcoming almost 12,000 youngsters.
“Demand for the pools facility has increased in recent years, prompting Freedom Leisure to re-invest in the facilities, improving the experience for existing customers and attracting more young families,” explains pool manager Simon Tomlins.
“The new development has been really well received by customers and parents. We have received overwhelming feedback from both parents and children on how colourful and vibrant our children’s pool is and how exciting the pool looks even before the children enter.”
Hippo Leisure supplied and installed all of the new play features and new slides for the leisure pool and children’s pool. The first phase of the redevelopment was to remove all the old features, including a tree house, which was the previous central focal point within the leisure pool. The second phase was to install and connect the new water features.
Simon explains: “The dedicated children’s pool has received a total transformation. After researching and seeing how children interact within the pool environment Freedom Leisure really wanted to help young children become more confident in the water. As a result many of new water features have been placed below head height to allow for lots of fun interaction.”
Operated by Freedom Leisure and comprising of four swimming pools, Guildford Spectrum is a unique leisure complex that provides sport and leisure facilities for the local community. The leisure pool is predominantly used for open swimming but also offers dedicated Toddler Splash sessions for the under-fives. The main pool is a 25 x 17m, eight-lane deck level swimming pool and is also home to Guildford City Swimming Club. The pool is used for both programmed lane swimming and casual swimming sessions. It is also used for group and private swimming lessons and water aerobics sessions. The teaching pool offers parents the opportunity to introduce their children to swimming away from all the activity in the leisure pool. It is also used in the complex’s extensive swimming lesson programme and for children’s parties Guildford Spectrum also has a dedicated diving pool which provides users with the opportunity to practice their diving with use of one and three metre springboards and a five metre platform.
