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Using Performance Measures to Assess Performance of Indoor and Outdoor Aquatic Centres
Gary Howat
School of Management, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia
Gary Crilley
School of Management, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia
Duncan Murray
School of Management, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia
Abstract
A recent trend throughout Australia has been to develop multi-purpose indoor public aquatic centres in favour of outdoor pools. Such major policy and planning decisions often rely on consultants' feasibility studies, yet there is limited comprehensive industry-wide data available on which to base such decisions.
The industry-wide performance measures discussed in this paper help fill this void by providing objective data to support the contention that multi-purpose indoor aquatic centres tend to outperform centres with solely outdoor pools. The key indicators of performance are based on financial viability and community participation data for a sample of Australian public aquatic centres.
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