How Virgin Active’s Loyalty Program Is Changing Lives Through Frequency and Consistency  – an interview with Ros Netto, Global Head of Rewards, Virgin Active

Every morning at 4 AM, a man in his early seventies stands outside a Virgin Active gym in South Africa, waiting for the doors to open. He’s survived multiple rounds of cancer treatment and now in remission, has a new mission: hit his weekly wellness goals.

“He told us, ‘I will hit my goals every week. This is important to me. I have beat cancer, and I love redeeming my weekly reward. I love being able to see my progression,'” recalls Ros Netto, Global Head of Rewards for Virgin Active. “The club staff know exactly who he is. He is faithfully at the club every day.”

This isn’t a just a profile of a high-profile loyalty program.  It’s a look into the future of customer loyalty in the healthcare and wellness industries, both categories that are increasingly important for millions of consumers. In this interview with Ros Netto, you will gain perspective on the dynamics of the South African loyalty market and meet a person leading change in that market and beyond as Virgin Active delivers its vision for wellness loyalty in multiple markets. 

From Consultant to Change Agent

Ros Netto’s path to leading one of the fitness industry’s most innovative loyalty programs began fifteen years ago at Truth, one of South Africa’s leading loyalty consultancies. Under the mentorship of industry veteran Amanda Cromhout, Netto spent nine years designing programs in a market just discovering loyalty.

Before diving into the formal interview, Netto talked about her personal passions: she’s a competitive endurance athlete and has completed two full Ironman races. Her husband shares her love of endurance sports, qualifying for the world championship Ironman race in Kona, Hawaii, and currently training for the 2026 Boston Marathon.

The revelation resonated with interview host Bill Hanifin, himself a 20-year triathlon veteran with two Ironmans under his belt. The mutual understanding was immediate—both knew intimately how commitment, patience, and resolve contribute to reaching seemingly impossible goals. It’s a mindset that permeates Netto’s approach to business and influenced her loyalty program design.

“South Africa’s loyalty landscape was still relatively early stage around 2010,” Netto explains. “There were only a handful of established loyalty programs at the time, and no major grocery retailer had yet launched a scaled offering.” During her tenure at Truth, Netto was part of a team working on early large-scale grocery loyalty initiatives, helping to shape strategy in a market that was still evolving and informed by learnings from more mature markets such as the United States.

After nine years of consulting, something was missing. “I hadn’t owned a program from end to end, from the brand side,” she reflects. That gap led her to KAUAI, South Africa’s largest healthy fast-casual restaurant chain. Her first day? April 1, 2020—in the heart of the pandemic.

Two years later, Virgin Active acquired KAUAI and its sister company Nu, bringing healthy food offerings directly into Virgin Active clubs. The acquisition brought Netto along with it. Today, she oversees rewards strategy across six territories: South Africa, the UK, Italy, Australia, Botswana, and Namibia, with Thailand & Singapore next on the horizon. 

Reimagining the Fitness Club

Virgin Active’s transformation extends far beyond typical gym rebrands. When CEO Dean Kowarski stepped in two years ago, he brought a vision of wellness beyond barbells and treadmills.

“He wanted to transform Virgin Active from just a fitness destination into what we term a social wellness club,” Netto explains. Today’s clubs feature recovery zones, healthy food options, kids’ play spaces, working spaces with bookable boardrooms, and in-house experts including personal trainers, physiotherapists, and swim coaches.

“We want to be that second space, baked into your daily routine,” Netto emphasizes. The rewards program, launched in South Africa in 2023 and now rolling out globally, serves as the digital bridge connecting members to this ecosystem. 

A Program Built on Behavioral Science

Virgin Active Rewards breaks from traditional fitness loyalty models fundamentally: it doesn’t reward spending. At all.

“We incentivize how you use our facilities and achieving your goals,” Netto states. “We don’t incentivize paying a membership fee.”

Weekly Rewards focus on instant gratification and habit formation.

• Members start with a goal of two club visits per week. Hit that goal, unlock a reward—typically a free smoothie from KAUAI or Nu. Achieve your goal, and next week’s target increases to three visits, then four. Miss your goal, and it adjusts back down.
• The results? 82% of their members enrolled in the program are active members with 62% of members achieving their weekly goals at least once monthly. This is a remarkable level of engagement in an industry notorious for abandoned memberships.

Milestone Rewards recognize sustained consistency.

• Hit uninterrupted weekly goals for 12 weeks straight, earn a nourishing meal. Reach 26 weeks, receive partner rewards or merchandise. Complete 52 weeks, receive a free month of membership. Miss a week, and the streak resets.
• “We’ve had way more members hit the 52-week milestone exceeding all baseline projections,” Netto notes. “It’s a good problem to have.”

Tier Benefits operate as always-on recognition.

• Members earn points for non-transactional activities: club visits, booking classes, watching online workouts. Points translate into Bronze, Silver, or Gold tier status, each unlocking progressive discounts from wellness partners like Biogen, Garmin, and Hyperice.
• And tier status, once earned, is always available for Virgin Active members. “You are Gold for life,” Netto explains. “Our ecosystem sees value in supporting highly motivated wellness-focused members “the crème de la crème,” as Netto calls them.

 The Role of Habit Formation

Virgin Active’s program design stems from deep understanding of behavioral psychology. While popular culture suggests 21 days forms a habit, Netto points to research indicating 60-90 days is more accurate

“We know that the first 90 days of someone’s journey with us is the most critical,” she notes. “It’s the period when they’ll form the habit, baking coming into our spaces as part of their daily life.”

Weekly rewards tap into extrinsic motivation—the immediate dopamine hit of achieving a goal. The milestone structure gradually shifts members toward intrinsic motivation, where the streak itself becomes the reward.

“Members get obsessed with tracking their consistency and not wanting to break their streak,” Netto observes. “If there’s some glitch in the system and we don’t track a visit, and there’s risk of breaking their streak, we’ll know about it. They are religiously tracking that progression.” 

Customer Experience and Associate Training are tied to Success

With 82% adoption across all 6 territories the program operates in, the program demonstrates clear traction. But Netto acknowledges a complex reality about loyalty measurement in fitness.

“We are not naive and think that rewards will fix everything,” she emphasizes. “You could have the most desirable rewards and seamless redemption. But if you have a poor customer experience, or if the basics of what we offer are lacking, loyalty’s not going to fix it.”

The program serves as a tool for operational teams, providing data and mechanisms to support members. Staff understanding becomes critical. Virgin Active gives staff a version of the program that mirrors the member experience without unlocking actual rewards, since staff entering clubs daily would automatically hit top achievements.

“We measure them through different leaderboards on how they engage members to participate,” she explains. Clubs get recognized for driving participation, incentivizing staff without gaming the system.

 The Top 100 and the Power of Recognition

Virgin Active identifies its top 100 members annually based on club visits over 12 months. These ultra-engaged members average 346 visits per year—essentially every day except Christmas.

Recognition goes beyond data. Top 100 members receive a personalized plaque on a locker of their choice. Club staff get involved. Handwritten notes arrive. The CEO participates.

The revelation came when Virgin Active asked these members how they achieved such consistency. “A lot of them attributed their success to the rewards program,” Netto recalls. “That was a huge aha moment.”

The cancer survivor at 4 AM wasn’t alone. Story after story revealed members for whom the program provided structure and recognition during life’s most challenging moments.

“When you’re in the thick of things, and systems are down, or budgets aren’t aligning, you reflect on these stories,” Netto says. “We’re actually doing a damn good job if we’re changing lives.”

 Lessons for Loyalty Professionals

Netto’s moment of clarity about loyalty’s power came early in her career, while working with daily spend retailers in South Africa. “People would get to the end of the month really struggling, waiting for that next paycheck,” she recalls. “But they’d banked just enough cashback to buy electricity, airtime, data—something really important. What a moment of clarity.”

The realization that loyalty programs can provide real, tangible value during difficult moments shapes Virgin Active Rewards’ philosophy. The program doesn’t chase only premium spenders or transaction volume. It recognizes behavior, supports wellness goals, and provides relevant rewards when members need them.

For an industry where abandoned memberships and high churn are accepted norms, Virgin Active is proving loyalty programs can work when designed around the principles of behavioral science and in turn reward the right actions. It’s also key that the entire organization supports member wellness.

“Loyalty’s not a silver bullet,” Netto concludes. “But when you align it with strong customer experience, when you give teams the tools to support members, when you recognize consistency and make it fun to progress—that’s when you see real impact.”

As Virgin Active continues global expansion, with recent launches in Australia and upcoming rollouts in Asia-Pacific, Netto and her team are scaling a model that puts member wellness—not wallet share—at the center.

The man waiting at 4 AM represents a fundamental truth: when loyalty programs align with genuine human motivation and meaningful goals, they don’t just drive business metrics. They change lives.