Sit.
Relax.
Take a deep breath.
Stretch.
Eat healthy.
Get a massage and walk on the beach.
If this sounds like a perfect way to spend your vacation, you might be one of millions
of people gravitating to wellness travel.
Being a tourist is often stressful.
Crowded places, noise, and new, unfamiliar environments can suck the joy out of a vacation,
so after having one, you might feel like you need another.
This is one of the main reasons the alternative – wellness tourism – has been flourishing
in the past few years.
Let’s talk about the global rise of wellness tourism.
Wellness by itself is the practice of actively improving your physical and mental health
to reach your highest potential.
It can be incorporated in all areas of our lives from eating healthier and spending less
time online to expanding our skills and contributing to our community.
Although often associated with pseudoscience and alternative medicine, the ideas of wellness
were developed by the former chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics, the late
Halbert L. Dunn.
In his 1959 book High Level Wellness, Dunn proposes that to prevent chronic illness and
mental distress we must focus on “raising the general levels of wellness among all people”.
A decade later, his ideas were picked up and mainstreamed both by health practitioners
and proponents of alternative medicine.
And in 2020, 600 million trips included wellness activities.
Wellness travel can mean different things to different people.
But one of its main characteristics as compared to more traditional, standardized vacations
is that the experience is deeply rooted in local history and culture, food native to
the region, spiritual traditions, mineral waters, thermal springs, and so on.
For centuries before us, the ancient traveled to destinations rich in natural resources,
believing that local muds, minerals, and waters could keep them healthy.
Today, we continue this tradition but on a much wider scale and with different levels
of immersion.
To understand modern wellness travel, we must distinguish two traveler groups who take part
in it.
Let’s start with analyzing motivations of the first and smaller group – primary or
core wellness travelers.
Primary wellness tourists are those who travel exclusively to improve or maintain their wellbeing
and quality of life.
These are people who need a break from the daily stress of their lives, or want to escape
their environment.
Work and everyday anxiety drives them to specialized retreats, where everything is created to help
their minds and bodies refresh and get ready to tackle everyday problems once again.
Retreats are focused on helping people not only destress, but also grow and elevate their
physical and mental health.
Typically located in remote, natural environments, wellness retreats often have a specialized
routine for guests, who share meals, attend classes, meditate, and participate in other
activities together.
Guests are also welcome to spend some alone time to connect with nature and contemplate.
The staff is exceptionally warm and friendly, often including therapists, psychologists,
and yoga instructors.
There may also be some rules to maintain the serene atmosphere at the retreat like no smoking
or alcohol on the premises.
Wellness retreats are also not the final resort (pun intended) for people who need some time
away from their normal lives.
While not all wellness retreats and spa hotels forbid alcohol or are located in remote rainforests,
they can still provide an appropriate environment to spend some mindful time with yourself.
They typically don’t play loud music or allow children under a certain age, but they
do have programs and facilities to help guests feel physically and mentally better.
Although wellness services are popular all over the world, some locations have become
branded as the best places for a wellness gateway.
Thailand, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Maldives share such important elements as great climate,
beautiful natural scenery, along with traditional treatments and native, regional cuisine.
But not all wellness-motivated travelers require such drastic changes.
This is why the lion’s share of the industry spendings come from secondary wellness tourists.
Most wellness-minded travelers enjoy simpler means of achieving inner comfort.
They don’t go on trips to learn something new about themselves, change their lives,
or experience digital detox.
Such tourists would rather have both worlds: indulging in a delicious meal with wine tasting,
taking part in a fitness class, visiting a spa with a variety of beauty and relaxation
procedures, sightseeing tours and mountain hikes, excursions to local wineries and farms,
participation in local rituals, sunrise yoga, and much more.
Such tourists also tend to travel with a friend or significant other to pamper themselves
and spend some chill time together.
They like to be left to their own devices and decide what they want to treat themselves
to without external guidance or a defined program.
In this sense, almost every type of traveler can be a wellness traveler if provided with
thematic offers and opportunities.
So how do travel brands participate in the wellness trend?
Ways to embrace the wellness travel trend
One of the easiest ways to incorporate wellness into your hotel’s or travel agency’s proposition
is by focusing on something unique that the destination has to offer.
Serene northern lights and steaming[d] saunas in Norway, ayurvedic retreats in India, surfing
experiences in California, hiking in the mountains of British Columbia – experiences that are
popular and native to the location are valued by wellness travelers, who crave traditional
practices that allow them to connect to the region.
Big hotel brands like Four Seasons embrace the specialty of every destination, so that
guests can enjoy natural greenery and snorkeling in Lanai, try forest bathing in Japan, or
enjoy olive oil tasting in Athens.
The other way to cater to wellness tourists is to help them search for targeted experiences
online.
Booking.com, Airbnb, TourRadar and others allow searching for wellness propositions
to easily filter out places and tours with health enhancing services.
And finally, consider increasingly popular corporate wellness travel.
Since work is one of the main stress generators in our lives, it makes sense for a big company
to worry about employee wellness.
That’s why many corporations now have special programs with benefits and perks to support
overall wellbeing in the office.
Travel can also be a part of that corporal wellness package.
Business travel can be an ordeal.
Employees have to stay at the top of their game while handling flight delays, jetlag,
and new environments.
An attractive travel package that includes a massage or a stay at a wellness hotel will
ease some of that stress, help employees feel more rested, and ready to tackle the day.
Corporate travel can also be combined with team building events.
Corporate wellness retreats are a popular trend for remote-first companies.
They enable a team to take a trip together to work and relax in sunny climates.
This includes a unique stay that can accommodate all employees, an office where everyone can
spend work hours, and a program of activities, typically including local experiences, spending
time in nature, and physical activity.
The goal is to take a break from normal office routines and eliminate the barriers between
people who have only seen each other on the computer screen.
Wellness is understood very differently both by travelers and businesses.
But there are two things wellness travel is not.
First, it’s not medical tourism.
Wellness travel serves not to provide treatment for existing conditions but to maintain your
health and prevent diseases.
So, even if there are certified therapists, medical personnel, and physical therapists
on the spa or hotel team, they exist only to make sure that a customer gets the most
out of every experience.
And second, it’s not always luxury tourism.
Although staying at wellness hotels is typically more expensive and exclusive, it’s not luxurious
in a traditional sense.
Wellness retreats often embrace simple design, routines, and food, attracting customers who
put value in simplicity that they often lack in busy, everyday life.
If you haven’t seen our video on the new definition of luxury in travel, we highly
recommend it as a part of the conversation of how travelers today are gravitating towards
finer experiences rather than things.
Wellness can be part of that or not, since by definition, it should be available to everyone.