A recovery room inside the club you already have: five numbers and a 12 m² store

By the Global Padel Report 2026 (Playtomic and Strategy&), the world had 58,334 padel courts at the end of 2025, up by 7,898 in a year. The report's Middle East page, which cites FIP, Padel Lands and Playtomic, puts Saudi Arabia above 1,000 courts and Qatar above 150. For Kuwait the International Padel Federation (FIP, 2025) estimates about 580 courts in about 202 clubs, which is under three courts a club. A club of that size is unlikely to have a spare wing, so a recovery room usually has to come out of rooms it already owns. In the Playtomic and Strategy& survey of 185 larger, premium clubs (Asia-Pacific, Germany, Spain, the UK and the US, not the Middle East), nine in ten of the top performers offered off-court services, which the report illustrates with lockers, a gym, a sauna, a pool or a cold plunge. The category is too broad to count plunges, so read it as a direction and not as a result for your club.

Four rooms a club already owns, and what each one asks

The first two sit inside walls the club already has. The last two are the stretch, and the annex raises a question for the municipality that this note cannot answer, because the answer differs by city and by property. For the full-size version, with two sides and a pair each, see the Riyadh padel club profile.

Measure the club in five numbers

1. Players leaving at once. Count the courts that finish within the same quarter-hour on the busiest evening and multiply by four. Four courts put 16 players at the door.
2. Free floor area. The clear area in m², the narrowest width, and the height under the lowest beam or pipe. The cabin is 2.2 m high inside, and its roof panel and vent outlet need room above.
3. Nearest power, water and drain. Distances in metres to the distribution board, a tap and a floor drain or waste stack, and the spare breaker capacity your electrician reads off the board.
4. Shade. The wall or corner that is shaded at 3 p.m. in July, because the chiller stands there.
5. The panel route. Door widths, corners, steps and lift sizes from where the truck stops to the room: the cabin arrives as numbered panels and the pool in pieces.

Send the five numbers with three photos and the layout comes back in up to 5 working days.

A 12 m² store, sum by sum

Take a store of 4.0 × 3.0 m, which is 12.0 m². The brief is a 6-seat cabin (2.4 × 2.1 m inside, a 12 kW three-phase heater) and one round plunge (Ø 1.4 m, about 1,100 L). On inside sizes alone they take 5.04 + 1.54 = 6.58 m² and the room looks generous. Walls and coping take floor too, so this sum allows 0.1 m on every cabin face for timber, insulation and trim and 0.1 m of coping round the pool; the layout gives the real figures. Circulation is judged by the allowance on our club pages: about the same area again as the equipment.

A 12 m² store is therefore a 4-seat room with a plunge, or a 6-seat cabin with the plunge outside under shade. Variant 2 costs about $28.2–44.5k (SAR 106–167k) and variant 3 about $35.8–57k (SAR 134–214k), the pergola being the shade. Connected load is 11.6 kW for variant 2 (heater 8 kW, chiller 3.6 kW) and 15.6 kW for the 6-seat variants (heater 12 kW, same chiller). The electrician sets that against the spare capacity from number 3, and pumps and controls are added from the equipment schedule. A rule of thumb is not a drawing, and the shape of the room decides as much as its area.

Sixteen players, one cabin: the evening wave in minutes

With a 20-minute cycle, n sessions take 20n − 5 minutes from the first group going in to the last coming out. Divide the players by the seats and round up to get n.

At 8 players a 4-seat and a 6-seat cabin need the same two sessions; the extra seats pay from 12 players up. The plunge needs its own sum. A 6-seat session sends six people into the cold together: a round plunge takes one at a time and a square one takes two, so that is six turns or three. Multiply by the time each person stays, which your rules set, and compare it with the 15 minutes the next group spends in the cabin. If the plunge takes longer, add a second one.

Pool first, cabin second: what each phase costs

The plunge goes first because it carries most of the civil work: the recess, the waterproofing, the drain and the plant niche, all decided once. The cabin follows as numbered panels, installed in up to 7 days, into a room whose power point and ventilation route were built with the plunge. Ranges are indicative and leave out civil works, connections, permits, duties and VAT. The price guide states what each range assumes, and the suite builder lets you change the mix.

Rules at the door: rinse, sit, short stays

• Shower before the cabin and before the plunge. Players arrive hot from a match, and a rinse point at the pool edge protects the water.
• Stays are seated and short, adults only and never alone. The sign says that members with a heart or blood-pressure condition need a doctor's advice first.
• A towel station and a shoe rack at the door, and a clock in view of the cabin door, so nobody guesses the 15 minutes.
• Ask the club's insurer what it wants in the rules and the health authority what it requires of the water; water treatment for commercial cold plunges lists the questions.
• A club with separate men's and women's sides should read gender-separated recovery zones: a 12 m² store is the room for one side.