Wellness tourism

Wellness tourism is travel for the purpose of promoting health and well-being through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities. While wellness tourism is often correlated with medical tourism because health interests motivate the traveler, wellness tourists are proactive in seeking to improve or maintain health and quality of life, often focusing on prevention, while medical tourists generally travel reactively to receive treatment for a diagnosed disease or condition.

The wellness tourism market includes primary and secondary wellness tourists. Primary wellness tourists travel entirely for wellness purposes while secondary wellness tourists engage in wellness-related activities as part of a trip. Secondary wellness tourists constitute the significant majority (87 percent) of total wellness tourism trips and expenditures (85 percent).

Types

Wellness travelers pursue diverse services, including physical fitness and sports; beauty treatments; healthy diet and weight management; relaxation and stress relief; spiritual tourism, including meditation and yoga, whether classical or as exercise; and health-related education. Wellness travelers may seek procedures or treatments using conventional, alternative, complementary, herbal, or homeopathic medicine.

Wellness resorts and retreats offer short-term, residential programs to address specific health concerns, reduce stress, or support lifestyle improvement.

Individual teachers, trainers or wellness practitioners may privately rent resort centers, small hotels or sections of larger hotels themed for the purpose.

Industry leaders meet for weekends in destination locations to discuss and promote their businesses.

Cruise ships can offer wellness programs including the use of on-board spas.

Destinations

Wellness tourism is now an identifiable niche market in at least 30 countries. Twenty countries accounted for 85 percent of global wellness tourism expenditures in 2012.

The top five countries alone (United States, Germany, Japan, France, Austria) account for more than half the market (59 percent of expenditures).

North America

As of 2014, the US is the largest wellness tourism market, with $180.7 billion in annual, combined international and domestic expenditures. The US is the top destination for inbound international wellness tourism, with 7.1 million international, inbound trips. Europe and high-income Asian countries are primary sources of wellness tourists traveling to the US.

Domestic tourism accounts for the majority (94 percent) of wellness trips in North America. Americans and Canadians receive—and take—few vacation days compared to workers in other countries making domestic, weekend trips the most popular wellness travel option.

Europe

Europe is the second largest wellness tourism market, with $158.4 billion in annual, combined international and domestic expenditures; the region ranks highest in number of wellness trips with 216.2 million, compared to North America's 171.7 in 2013. Europeans have long believed in health benefits derived from mineral baths, saunas, thalassotherapy, and other natural and water-based treatments. Thermal resorts and hotels in Turkey and Hungary cater to wellness tourists, many of whom are subsidized by host countries such as Norway and Denmark seeking to mitigate costs of medical procedures for patients with chronic conditions requiring expensive surgeries.

Asia-Pacific

The Asia-Pacific region ranks as the third largest with $6.4 billion in annual, combined international and domestic expenditures. Ancient regional wellness traditions include Indian Ayurveda, Yoga, traditional Chinese medicine, Hilot, and Thai massage.

Latin America-Caribbean

Latin America-Caribbean is the fourth largest region for wellness tourism in terms of number of trips and expenditures. Domestic tourism accounts for about 71 percent of wellness tourism trips, and 54 percent of wellness tourism expenditures.

Middle East and Africa

The Middle East and Africa are currently the smallest regions for wellness tourism. The Middle East has a long tradition of bathing associated with Turkish baths, and some older facilities are being modernized to serve spa-bound tourists. Tourism is on the rise in the region, and governments and private developers are developing new facilities.

In Africa, wellness tourism is concentrated in a few regions such as South Africa and the Maghreb; it is dominated by international tourists.

Criticism

Wellness tourism advocates suggest that vacations improve physical well-being, happiness, and productivity, citing that health-oriented trips give travelers a fresh perspective and positively affect creativity, resilience, problem solving, and capacity for coping with stress. Yet the health benefits of wellness vacations expected and reported by vacationers have proved difficult to quantify.