How Wellness Tourism Is Changing the Travel Economy
You can find your next lucrative venture by tapping into the rapidly emerging wellness tourism vertical.
Yet another health-related industry is emerging in commerce. The wellness tourism field is a powerful merging of two distinct domains. It’s the joining of the $2.6 trillion tourism industry and the $4.2 trillion wellness industry.
Increasingly, consumers are worried about their health. The emergence of holistic healing and wellness are having an increasing impact on consumer decision-making.
Now, people want to maintain their health – even when they’re on vacation. If you’re in search of a profitable new venture, wellness tourism may be the vertical you been looking for.
Travel the World While Getting Fit: Welcome to Wellness Tourism
Wellness tourism encompasses the maintenance or enhancement of individual well-being. It’s essential, however, not to confuse it with medical tourism. Because people commonly use the two terms – medical tourism and wellness tourism – interchangeably, there’s often confusion and misunderstanding regarding the two fields.
It’s not just consumers who confuse the two terms. The confusion is also fueled by the misuse of the terms by travel destinations, government agencies and promotional enterprises. Resultantly, people often use the term wellness tourism as a catchall to describe both medical and wellness services.
However, these services are quite distinct. Often, people group together a range of offerings, including
- Dental care
- Heart surgery
- Spa services
- Yoga retreats
Typically, health tourism and wellness tourism services aren’t even located in the same facility.
In an attempt to bolster tourism, destinations provide many offerings for travelers. Wellness tourism is the latest in the crop. It’s helping to overcome the negative aspects usually connected with vacationing, such as binge eating or over-consuming alcohol.
What’s more, it’s turning vacation time into an opportunity to get healthy. During wellness vacations, travelers take a proactive approach to maintaining their health, reducing stress, preventing disease and enhancing their overall well-being.
Forget Traditional Advertising. Social Media Is the Key to Building a Wellness Brand
If you plan to enter the burgeoning and lucrative wellness tourism industry, you’ll need to get the word out about your enterprise. Social media advertising can enable you to do just that.
Increasingly, social media advertising is an integral part of strategic planning. Several tools can help you get the word out about your wellness brand.
For example, Hootsuite is a popular social media tool that will help you promote your brand across more than 20 platforms. Mention, a social media marketing platform, can help you drive conversion with features such as social media publishing and competitive intelligence.
Google Analytics is another popular digital marketing tool that enables you to generate detailed reports, analyze data and discover essential facts about consumer behavior. Tools such as IFTTT empower you to integrate all of your high-tech digital marketing tools, and Raven lets you create marketing reports, audit websites and analyze competitive links.
Healthy & Lucrative: Exploring the Big Business of Wellness Tourism
Florida is an excellent example of one state that benefits from wellness tourism. The state boasts the fourth-largest gross domestic product in the United States, raking in over $883 billion in 2017. California, Texas and New York trail right behind Florida.
During that same year, the tourism industry alone generated $90 billion. As a result, the federal, state and local government has enjoyed generous revenues. The federal government took in over $13 billion, while the state and local governments took in nearly $11.5 million in 2017.
What’s more, Florida tourism continues to expand. The state is a prime example of how wellness can contribute to the bottom line.
So, What Are Examples of Wellness Tourism?
Around the world, many luxury brands offer wellness travel. For example, the Four Seasons Hotel & Resort offers complimentary walking, hiking and jogging tours. The excursions showcase the best of what the city has to offer.
Four Seasons also offers VIP service via its President’s Club. Members have access to yoga mats and stretch bands as well as complimentary Reebok exercise gear.
Another well-known luxury brand, Westin Hotels, loans out New Balance fitness clothing and offers in-room fitness equipment. In the rooms, guests can get in shape to the latest workout videos, join a group running excursion or plan a jogging route.
Signature wellness experiences are an everyday occurrence among luxury hotels across the nation. Nearly every luxury brand, for instance, offers spa treatments. Wellness travel, however, allows brands to stand out from the competition. Furthermore, wellness tours enable brands to create an experience that aligns with the surroundings of the venue.
Wellness Tourism Could Be Just Getting Started
Industry watchdogs forecast that the global wellness tourism vertical generated more than $683 billion in 2018. Furthermore, they expect the business to expand by more than 7% annually.
As tourism increases around the world, the wellness tourism industry will reap generous rewards. Meanwhile, the various cities that host luxury wellness travel brands will also benefit. Also, as more brands offer wellness tourism, they’ll build a growing, satisfied consumer base.
Now is the right time to join in the wellness tourism business boom. The economy is well into recovering from the recession of yesteryear. Resultantly, consumers have an increasing amount of disposable income, and they’re using it for wellness travel.
As a result, enterprises are spending more to provide for the wants and needs of this growing demographic. As more travel brands enter the wellness vertical, they’ll capture a growing number of new buyers who want to get healthy while they’re vacationing.
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