What the members actually use

A new gym opens on a busy road in Abu Dhabi, and every advert for it shows the same two things: a wall of glass lit up at night, and a rooftop pool with the city behind it.

Those images do their job. People talk about the pool. Somebody posts the glass wall. The opening is noticed.

Then the members start coming, three or four evenings a week, and almost none of them ever goes up to the roof.

What they live with is everything the adverts left out. Whether there is a free locker at seven in the evening. Whether the showers run hot. Whether the one squat rack has a queue of six. Whether the trainer on the floor remembers your bad knee. A member can go a whole year without seeing the glass wall from outside, because they arrive through the car park.

This happens far beyond gyms. A phone is sold on the colour of its back, which its owner hides inside a case on the first day. A hotel is booked for a lobby the guest crosses twice, while the stay is decided by the pillow and the noise from the corridor.

The striking feature is not a lie. It is simply the part built for the people who are deciding, not the people who will stay. One group is there for a minute. The other is there every day.

The trouble starts when the makers believe their own adverts, and pour their effort into the next eye-catching thing while the lockers stay broken.

A striking detail gets remembered. That is all it gets. Members renew for the showers.