Why the Future of Fitness Is Smaller: What Orangetheory's Italy Expansion Signals for Luxury Wellness

Orangetheory Fitness, part of the Purpose Brands portfolio, is entering Italy with a smaller-footprint studio format built for markets where real estate is tight. The move signals a shift luxury hospitality should watch: premium fitness experiences no longer require large spaces, only the right design in a well-chosen one.

The Constraint Every Property Knows

Space is the constant tension in luxury hospitality. Every square foot a fitness facility occupies is space not generating revenue elsewhere, and in dense urban markets the math gets harder still. For years that tension capped what a property could offer. A serious fitness experience meant a large floorplate, and a large floorplate meant a tradeoff most properties couldn't justify.

That assumption is now being tested in the wider fitness world, and the implications reach directly into hospitality.

What Orangetheory's Move Actually Shows

Orangetheory Fitness recently granted franchise rights to Icon Palestre, led by CEO Felice Orsinetti, to open four Orangetheory studios in the greater Rome area over the next four years. It marks the brand's first entry into the Italian market. The Rome studios will use a new configuration with a smaller footprint and a streamlined equipment offering.

The detail that matters is why. The reduced size lets Orangetheory open in areas with limited real estate without changing its signature mix of strength and cardio classes. The experience stays intact. The space required to deliver it shrinks. Purpose Brands' Chief International Officer framed the smaller format as an advantage that opens locations that would not have been possible before and meaningfully reduces upfront capital costs.

A premium fitness experience that fits where it could not fit before, at a lower cost to build. For any operator who has ever measured a wellness offering against the space and capital it demands, that is a meaningful shift.

Why This Is a Portfolio Strategy, Not a One-Off

Orangetheory's Italy entry is one move inside a much larger expansion. Purpose Brands is the world's largest portfolio of fitness, health, and wellness franchise brands, generating $3.9 billion in revenue across 46 countries and territories on all seven continents, with a combined 6 million members. Alongside Orangetheory, the portfolio includes Anytime Fitness, Waxing the City, and The Bar Method.

Purpose Brands has been active across multiple markets this year, renewing Orangetheory's existing master franchise agreement in Japan and entering Kuwait with Anytime Fitness through Rhone Fitness, its area development partner in the GCC. Growing globally is the company's top priority for 2026.

That scale is the context that makes the smaller-format studio worth noticing. This is a deliberate model from the largest player in the category, designed to put a premium fitness experience into markets and spaces that were previously closed to it. When the largest portfolio in wellness redesigns its footprint, the rest of the industry should read it as a signal.

What This Means for Your Property

The takeaway is not that every property should build a boutique studio. It is that the old tradeoff between space and quality is loosening.

Wellness continues to climb as a reason guests choose one property over another. The operators who win on it will not be the ones with the most square footage. They will be the ones who treat fitness space as a design problem, delivering a genuinely premium experience in a smaller, smarter footprint. Orangetheory is proving the model in Rome, backed by the scale of the largest wellness franchise portfolio in the world. The same thinking applies to any luxury property weighing how to offer more wellness without surrendering the floor space to do it.

The room can be smaller. The standard cannot.

Purpose Brands is a Partner of the International Luxury Hotel Association. For more information, visit purposebrands.com.