David Lloyd - Reviews 

Do not be fooled by the recent rebrand from Aspria to David Lloyd Brussels Avenue Louise. The new name is just a cover to escape a terrible reputation. It is the exact same failing facility, still run by the same General Manager: Arnaud Micheels.

Under Arnaud Micheels, you pay €3,600 a year (€300/month) for a "luxury" club that operates like a predatory cash grab. Before you sign a contract or hand over your bank details, read what happens behind the scenes under his management:

1. Rotting Facilities: Arnaud Micheels collects luxury fees while letting the club fall apart. The air conditioning fails every summer, the heating breaks in the winter, and the pool is freezing. The changing rooms are dirty, overcrowded, and frequently out of towels.

2. Fake 5-Star Reviews to Trap New Members: Whenever real members post 1-star Google reviews about broken facilities, they get buried under waves of generic 5-star ratings. Arnaud Micheels allegedly coordinates and writes these fake reviews himself to trick innocent people into locking into €3,600 annual contracts before they see the truth.

3. Polite Feedback Triggers Revenge and Police Calls: In a normal business, polite complaints lead to repairs. Here, Arnaud Micheels has a massive ego and treats any polite question about broken AC or cold water as a personal attack. His standard retaliation is to cancel your membership on the spot and call the police to have you removed and humiliated in front of other members. Paying €3,600 a year only to have Arnaud Micheels call the cops on you for asking why the heating is broken is unhinged.

4. Blatant Gaslighting: After kicking you out and keeping your money, Arnaud Micheels will look you dead in the eye and claim you were "never a member" to dodge refunds, even while you hold up your signed contract and bank statements proving thousands of euros in payments.

5. Billing Traps and GDPR Violations: If you try to cancel legitimately, Arnaud Micheels and his team ignore emails, stall the process, and charge hidden fees. Worse, private member data and sensitive information have been weaponized as leverage during billing disputes, which is a massive GDPR violation.

6. Terrified Staff and Corporate Cover-Ups: Staff turnover is sky-high because employees are terrified of Arnaud Micheels's dictatorial behavior. Good staff who try to help members are pushed out because Arnaud Micheels only cares about hiding the club's failures from David Lloyd corporate headquarters to protect his yearly bonuses.

What to do if you have been burned:
Do not just walk away. If Arnaud Micheels has locked you into a faulty contract, refused a refund, or misused your personal data, hit back through official channels where he cannot delete your complaints:

File an official privacy complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (APD/GBA) for the GDPR violations.

Report the unfair contract cancellations and billing traps to Consumerombudsman.be and Test Achats / Test Aankoop.

Escalate directly to David Lloyd Leisure UK Corporate HQ so executives see how Arnaud Micheels is destroying their brand in Brussels.

TL;DR: A new "David Lloyd" sign does not fix a broken gym. As long as Arnaud Micheels is General Manager at David Lloyd Brussels Avenue Louise, you are paying €3,600 for broken facilities, fake reviews, and a petty manager who calls the police to humiliate members who politely ask for working AC. Never give them direct debit access to your bank account. If you were burned during the Aspria to David Lloyd transition, share your experience below so this thread ranks at the top of Google whenever anyone searches for Arnaud Micheels or David Lloyd Avenue Louise.

Very badly run. This club continuously runs out of towels. Have been served mouldy food. The wait for food and drinks is sometimes an hour, so I don't eat there are any more. They ran out of ice in summer. They closed the womans showers for almost a week this month, which was very frustrating because that I didn't use the gym at that time, but didn't get any reimbursement. The impact of the towels running out as meant i've had to return home. The only reason I stay is for the outdoor pool, and so the instructors are great but the club manager is incompetent.

i have tried so many times to sort out a problem with membership services about a member that’s passed away they agreed to refund the rest of his membership as it was payed annually can’t get thought they then sent me a link to which they want me to put my credit card details in to pay for a reply i sent an email to there address
they say they don’t use this anymore just send you back to app page would just like to add to my review after reading the other reviews i have found my own club very helpful the staff are excellent facilities or also good it’s just a shame customer service let the company down when there only job is to help solve the problems that customers have i don’t know if my complaint has resulted in my paying for vouchers for personal training which has been taken from my account but not delivered to my membership account and 1 remaining voucher has disappeared i do hope this is not in retaliation for my review

Been a member at DL Milton Keynes for 7 years and I’ve slowly seen the standards drop dramatically especially in the last 2 years. I think I understand their plan. Every couple of months, just flood the place with their £35 for two weeks offer. So full paying members can’t get to use the spa, outdoor pool or facilities because the club is overrun. With each new temporary guest buying food and drink at their extortionate prices, DL are quids-in. There are great facilities, a superb outdoor and indoor pool, fabulous spa, and tennis and paddle galore and numerous classes. That said, it has become so overcrowded that it’s no longer a pleasure.

Shawfair member here.

The club experience has declined significantly.

Broken lockers can take months to be repaired.

The reception team rarely answers the phone, so any queries have to be raised via email, where it can take days to receive a response.

There are very few tennis activities available. Apart from a weekend social session, you have to pay extra for everything else.

The parking is always extra busy and people often has to look for parking options outside the club facilities.

Finally, I requested a three-month pause on my membership due to personal circumstances. Despite being a member since the day the club opened, my request was denied.

I had a great experience today thanks to Sarka. She was incredibly helpful, friendly, and made sure everything was sorted without any hassle.
From start to finish she handled my query with professionalism and a really positive attitude. Nothing was too much trouble and she resolved everything quickly and efficiently. It’s exactly the kind of experience that makes you trust a company.
It’s rare to come across customer service this genuinely pleasant — she went above and beyond and left me with a smile. Thank you
Sarka!
Best wishes
Sabite Ozan

Very unhelpful and not client friendly service at the reception.
People their don't have the user experience in mind at all.
👎

I’ve been a member of this gym in Uccle for years, and unfortunately the decline over the past two years has been impossible to ignore.

What used to be a nice place to train has turned into a constant construction site. There are always works going on, yet the quality of the facilities keeps getting worse. The changing rooms and showers are often dirty, sometimes broken, and clearly not maintained at the level you would expect from a premium gym.
What’s even more frustrating is the attitude of management. Members raise concerns, but nothing changes. It feels like feedback is ignored and real conversations are avoided instead of addressed. the answer to all the concerns are: go somewhere else or freeze your membership.
At around €250 per month, the price is simply not justified anymore. For that kind of money in Brussels, there are far better gyms that actually take care of their facilities and listen to their members.
Very disappointing.

Barbara the instructor at the David Lloyd Kidbrooke is the best instructor ever, I love doing her classes.

Bushey David Lloyd’s- this club is a club I would not recommend anyone to go near . It is a club which cannot control its members and their behaviour towards ethnic minorities . I even e-mailed them to cancel several times and still not heard back .

I would give a score of zero or a negative if it was possible.
I signed up to be a member of David Lloyds Manchester North before it was open. I have been a member since the club opened. I have been a member for nearly 30 years. It has been very rare for me and my friends to not be able to book a court for two hours. I usually play indoor tennis for two hours, three times a week. I never play tennis outside, even in the summer.
Manchester North have decided to convert 3 indoor tennis courts to Padel courts. This means there will only be 6 indoor tennis courts (instead of 9 indoor courts). There has been no consultation at all with the tennis members about 3 indoor courts being repurposed. David Lloyd knew there would be a great oppossion to a reduction of the number of indoor tennis courts . It was getting more and more difficult to book indoor tennis courts. It will be impossible to play tennis at Manchester North anymore.
David Lloyd say we will have the same 'ratio' of courts to book. The fact is there will be a vast number of people trying to book 6 indoor tennis courts. The minute number of courts will NOT meet demand.
This is not the way to treat members of David Lloyd.