Mid-Year Update: Three Mega Wellness Trends for Mainstream Hospitality

In 2020, the pandemic meant a near-complete brake on travel, and in our Global Wellness Summit trends report released in January, our trend the "Year of the Travel Reset" argued that this long travel pause gave both consumers and suppliers an unprecedented opportunity to think about rebooting travel for the better: to make it, in a word, more "well."

Now we're halfway into 2021, and with vaccinations on the rise, travel is opening up (albeit in uneven ways around the world), and this article gives me an opportunity to think about the really powerful wellness trends that are now impacting all hotels, not just wellness-focused destinations. These are three major shifts that I want every hotel to "get," because I believe they're not just going to impact properties in the next few months, but long-term.

1. All Travel Essentially Becomes Wellness Travel

Our 2021 trend predicted that this is the year that pretty much all travel becomes wellness travel. That may seem like a bold statement, but it's essentially true. The manic, mindless getaways to tourist-crushed destinations (that have dominated travel for decades) are getting replaced by slower, closer, more mindful experiences. With travelers still tentative, they demand that their health and safety is front-and-center at destinations: from vaccine and testing protocols to air purification to access to doctors and clinics.

In addition, overtourism is being challenged and undertourism corrected. People are craving the outdoors and deep nature experiences as never before (more below) as well as seeking experiences that ignite their sense of purpose and meaning, whether pursuing philanthropic travel or learning a whole new skill. And if people have been interested in sustainable travel for years, there is a radical new compass point: regenerative travel, where you leave a place better off than you found it.

So, if for years, the hotel industry has talked about wellness travel as a "trend," the pandemic has cracked open and broadened the concept: When people travel now, they want a health benefit from it. They want their well-being addressed throughout the entire property: from their safety to a demand for healthy food, sleep, lighting, air and water to healthy programming for kids to more "social wellness" opportunities. "Wellness" is no longer a travel trend, it's a global movement and more totalizing demand, and hotels need to think beyond the compartmentalized spa or fitness center.

If the hotel model has long been to create and then perceive all the departments - from the spa to F&B - is isolated profit and operations centers, even the most mainstream hotels will now need to think more like an integrated wellness resort: programming wellness from the top and thinking across and outside existing departments. The kind of meaningful, "it's everywhere" wellness that travelers demand is being held back by departmental models and mindsets.

2. A Nature Smackdown Is Underway in Hospitality–Develop Your "Nature Assets"

Countless surveys have shown how people worldwide flocked to healing, social-distanced nature since the pandemic: national parks were swarmed, camping gear sold out, and hundreds of travel articles were devoted to helping people find the most remote nature destinations. Wild nature was taking on a whole new value for travelers before the pandemic, as we all know the rustic treehouse or glamping property in the wild has been trumping the gilded luxury palace-resort for years.

While some may think that the nature-mania travel trend will recede with the virus, I–and other experts–would disagree with that conclusion. I'm very struck by what the Global Wellness Institute's partner economist, Thierry Malleret, has recently argued: that the post-pandemic era will see the rise of an entire "nature economy"– new ways of monetizing nature across commercial sectors - and how that will continue to redefine travel. There are many forces driving this, from the fact that every week it seems there is a new study on the profound impact that time in nature has on physical and mental well-being (with the medical industry getting serious about "nature prescriptions") to something deeply psychological: as we humans have destroyed the Earth, our ache for it is becoming elegiac and near obsessional.

Connecting people with nature in ever more creative, profound ways is a huge, current trend that will only quicken. If studies show that awe-inducing nature (say, spectacular waterfalls or mountains) deliver more potent mental wellness benefits than "mundane" nature, new hotel properties and programs are thinking beyond the staid property gardens and reaching for truly awesome nature experiences and design. A nature smackdown is underway. There are countless examples, from the Ritz-Carlton Ras Al Khaimah's (near Dubai) moonlight camel rides in their nature reserve to Six Senses Punakha (Bhutan) leading forest hikes to a Buddhist monastery to meet with monks, followed by meditation rituals back at the lodge.

Many of the headline-grabbing hospitality openings of 2021 are all about deep nature immersion, such as Explora El Chalten in Argentina's Patagonia, with its ice hikes and rock climbing around Los Glaciares National Park. The jaw-dropping new Arctic Bath in Sweden is literally suspended in an icy river in Lapland and wilderness treks are led by the indigenous Sámi people, while Amangiri's new Camp Sarika in Utah is just ten incredible canvas pavilions nestled in 600 acres of national parks. We're moving from nature as picturesque backdrop in hospitality to sublime main event: People want spiritual forest bathing, wild swimming and waterfall bathing, stargazing with the property astronomer, and not to just "consume" nature but to help conserve it and re-wild properties.

The nature moves are happening at the most mainstream end. Airbnb is wise, having just launched a "Rural Bootcamp " program to get countryside communities to open their homes to global nature-seekers while start-up Hipcamp, which lets travelers book Airstream trailers, tents, cabins and treehouses on private land, aims to be the "Airbnb of the outdoors." Hotels need to pay attention as rental platforms are now outperforming them by large margins, because travelers are seeking nature and socially-distanced stays.

Every hotel should be interrogating how they can most meaningfully exploit their nature assets in this new "nature economy"– and of course even urban properties can embrace biophilic design and bring nature indoors and often move treatments, fitness and wellness programming outside and up on the roof. Soul stirring and expert-led nature experiences that connect people are newly monetizable and need to be given the attention that spas and fitness centers get.

3. Wellness Sabbaticals and Workcations - and Making New Distinctions

With work from home radically accelerated by the pandemic (and going nowhere), it's been endlessly documented how mainstream (Hyatt, Marriott, etc.) and boutique hotel brands, wellness resorts, national tourism boards and home rental platforms have rushed to create programs that attract the digital nomads to take a long (weeks, months) workcation, rolling out work-from-hotel packages with special pricing and perks. And after a year-plus of lockdown, travelers in general want longer and more transformative trips, whether much longer family vacations or workcations, as the global mental health crisis we are in right now after this long pandemic is at triage levels.

The terms "workcation" and "wellness sabbatical" are increasingly used interchangeably, but I think it's time to make distinctions. I coined the term "wellness sabbatical," and made it a top trend for 2020, with a very specific concept in mind: a long (3 weeks or more, ideally) stay where you intentionally blend work and healthy experiences at a destination.

You focus on your wellness for a long enough time (three weeks is the sweet spot I've learned, after working with wellness resorts for decades) to kickstart lasting lifestyle changes and positively shake up your body and brain, but you also work and stay connected to work (great WiFi, workspaces, etc.). There has been so much shaming of people that don't take vacations, but many simply cannot completely disconnect from work. So, the wellness sabbatical is a daily balance and blending of wellness and work at destinations that program for it.

The differences between a true "wellness sabbatical" and a "workcation" can be likened to the difference between generic travel and wellness travel. The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness tourism as "travel that is focused on the pursuit of maintaining or enhancing one's personal well-being." It's a movement born of centuries of travel that were associated with so much excess and the vacation as constant party: too much bad eating and drinking, too many late nights, etc.

While the workcation has been a great pandemic model, ultimately, I think it will become clear that just adding a vacation model to work has far less well-being and productivity benefits for both the worker and the employer, it's simply less sustainable. Destinations that move closer to programming for a wellness sabbatical will be models that employers are more likely to support and invest in.

The wellness sabbatical concept has been very much associated with the luxury end, and yes, amazing, high-end properties such as Rancho La Puerta in Mexico, Kamalaya in Thailand, and Vana and Ananda in India were early to create highly structured, long wellness sabbatical programs. Employers increasingly understand that they need to look after the employees who make them big bucks, and it's been reported that 25% of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For offer sabbaticals.

But there are wellness sabbatical opportunities for mainstream and affordable hotel properties, who are now putting the emphasis on the "work" and "cation" elements, to deliver more wellness to the digital nomad - whether meditation, yoga, and healthy living classes or group runs and hikes - all as part of their special package and pricing.

We're at an extraordinary moment in the history of hospitality, where the once-rigid and separately experienced concepts of "vacation," "work" and "wellness" are going to get blended in powerful, new ways. If the massive, future issue for society is helping people balance life, work and healthy behaviors, how is your property specifically programming for that? Both the workcation and wellness sabbatical models mean a future of (great news!) much longer stays, so both need to be powerfully encouraged. It also means a new world of travel where the property is more the main destination, not just a place to crash. And these guests need more healthy, social things to do…of every kind.

The work-wellness stay will also impact urban destinations, as more employees work remotely and return to work headquarters and meetings for occasional but longer stays in cities - giving rise to the urban/suburban work-wellness hotel as the new pied-à-terre option.

Wellness is dramatically more important to consumers coming out of the pandemic. A recent McKinsey study found that 79% of world consumers now report that wellness is important to them and every market surveyed reported a big increase in the prioritization of wellness in the last 2-3 years.

There are dozens of trends in wellness travel I could have discussed, from the rise of sophisticated, integrated medical-wellness resorts to a new focus on food and the microbiome to new programming around physical and emotional resilience. I focused on these three - how all travel is becoming wellness travel, the radical power of nature and the rise of a "nature economy," and the staying power of the wellness workcation or sabbatical model - because I feel that every hotel needs to get them and get them right. It can mean looking at your property, your offerings and operations in a whole new way.