People today travel for wellness more than ever, and it’s affecting how destinations and hotels think about their offering. At the same time, what consumers consider wellness is changing rapidly.
This article examines the current size of the wellness tourism industry, what the trends are that are currently defining wellness travel, and some future signals of wellness tourism.
Wellness tourism refers to travel that is specifically aimed at maintaining, enhancing, or restoring an individual’s health and well-being. Wellness can mean a plethora of things, which consequently makes the tourism around it encompass a wide spectrum.
We often think of a spa stay or multi-week retreats as belonging to this category, but who’s to say that a city break wouldn’t be the restorative option for some? Increasingly common features in wellness tourism are related to sleep, nutrition, fitness programming, and longevity.
The global wellness tourism market was estimated at $990 billion in 2025, and it’s projected to reach $2.4 trillion by 2035 at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3%.
North America, the land of the health optimizers, currently dominates the market and accounts for the largest revenue share. When looking at the service categories within wellness tourism, lodging is unsuprisingly the single largest; we are discussing wellness tourism after all.
The scale of the growth of wellness tourism largely mirrors what is happening in the broader wellness economy, the umbrella category for wellness-related markets that reached a new peak of $6.8 trillion in 2024 and has doubled in size since 2013.
Consumers are more aware of wellness (e.g., 84% of Americans and 94% of Chinese respondents to this McKinsey survey place wellness high on their list of everyday priorities), which is, then, reflected in travel behavior. Simon-Kucher's 2026 travel research found 44% of high-income travelers took a wellness trip in 2025, and 58% have one planned for 2026.
Most notably, the spending in this category appears to be very resilient and holds firm even during otherwise economically difficult periods. As we have ventured deeper into the experience economy, consumers place spending priority on wellness travel over categories like clothing or entertainment.
In general, wellness travelers also spend more, with international wellness tourists averaging at 36% more per trip and domestic at around 163% more.
Millennials and Gen Z spend disproportionately on wellness compared to other categories when it comes to discretionary spending, and there’s reason to believe that this trend will continue with Gen Alpha.
The trends outlined below span different price points and approaches to wellness tourism, but they all point to the same direction. The wellness traveler of 2026 is willing to spend on intentional offerings and has little patience for generic wellness programming.
Here’s what’s defining the category right now.
There are very few wellness traditions that have moved from niche to mainstream as quickly as sauna bathing. While it was once considered more of a peripheral feature of Nordic and Germanic hospitality, sauna culture has picked up speed and has changed how destinations position themselves and their offering.
Finland, the spiritual home of Sauna, is leading the way. The Jyväskylä Region in Central Finland (promoted as "the Sauna Region of the World") is an example of sauna culture packaged as a tourism product in its own right.
The region has a multitude of interesting experiences to offer in this vein, including the Sauna Village. Located in Jämsä on the shores of Lake Päijänne, the village houses 24 historic smoke saunas with the oldest dating back to the 18th century, and it’s easily the largest collection of Finnish smoke saunas in the world.
Visitors can take guided tours and learn about thousands of years of Finnish sauna history and culture, and the saunas are heated and open to the public throughout the year.
The Sauna Village is entirely volunteer-run, which adds an unusual dimension to its appeal. In a way, it can be considered a regenerative hospitality initiative in the social sense where the property gives back to its surrounding community.
At the complete opposite end of the spectrum of sauna culture are corporate-backed bathing houses (also called social wellness clubs) in North America, such as Othership and Bathhouse, that offer a setting tailored for the health optimizer and longevity seeker.
More sauna and bathing-based businesses are popping up, and the injection of institutional capital signals a tipping point in the category, which perfectly converges with consumers’ growing interest in heat therapy, contrast bathing, and recovery-focused wellness practices, to name a few constituents of the perfect storm surrounding sauna.
A macro shift in luxury wellness travel is a move toward radical simplicity, almost in a Marie Kondo-esque way, where maximalism is stripped away piece by piece until only what sparks joy is left.
Space and silence are now named as the real markers of status, and terms such as ‘hushpitality’ and ‘nervous-system care’ are far more present in luxury travel forecasts compared to glamour or extravagance, and this shift can already be detected in how legacy brands are repositioning themselves.
The Maldivian resort group Soneva, a luxury hospitality pioneer since 1995, explicitly announced its new direction to be ‘Bare Luxury,' which the company describes as the result of refining and removing excess to make space for joy and presence.
Neil Gallagher, the company’s CEO, explains that Soneva’s new approach is a response to the woes of our fast-paced modern life. "Fast consumption, constant stimulation, the growth of AI and the pressure we all feel to optimize every hour has made the case for something quieter and more human”.
The bare philosophy is extended into each dimension of the guest experience, including design that supports well-being and co-curated wellness experiences that combine modern integrative wellness and traditional healing modalities.
As wellness tourism matures, luxury operators are choosing to compete and differentiate themselves through restraint and intention in their offerings rather than relying on the volume of amenities.
The perfect segue from sauna-ing is the category it often falls under: longevity. Wellness tourism offerings aimed at increasing an individual’s healthy life span are especially booming at the luxury end of the market.
According to McKinsey, up to 60% of consumers across markets rank healthy aging as a top or very important priority, and this is not only the case for older age groups. GWI data similarly shows that traditional and complementary medicine, which is where much of the longevity and biohacking-related spend is absorbed, is the second fastest-growing category within the wellness economy in the upcoming years.
Destinations are already translating the growing demand into multi-day (or week) stays that are distinctively outcome-driven.
A large part of wellness tourism today has nothing to do with relaxation, as travelers want measurable outcomes, whether that’s in the form of diagnostics or personalized health protocols based on biomarker tracking.
According to Deloitte, more than one-third of consumers worldwide check their phone within five minutes of waking up in the morning, and even more find themselves to be dependent to their smartphones throughout the day. As a result, there is growing demand for disconnection from technology, and reconnection with the natural world.
Wellness, in this context, is the absence of constant stimulation. Hilton’s research shows that 27% of travelers said they planned to cut their social media use on holiday, and the luxury rental platform Plum Guide reported a 17% jump in searches for unplugged, tech-lite properties
Destinations and resorts across the wellness tourism industry are removing screens and notifications to prompt unstructured time spent in nature or other calming environments. This trend is in an interesting juxtaposition with the push for automation elsewhere in the industry, especially in the budget and midscale segments.
Still there are tech-lite properties for each segment, such as UK and Spain-based Unplugged that rents tiny off-grid cabins where guests can lock their phone in a box on arrival and have no wi-fi or TV. There are also multi-day digital detox retreats such as Bliss & Stars in South Africa where there is programming such as guided stargazing and somatic therapy to support the guest’s well-being holistically while they renounce alcohol, caffeine, and internet for the duration of their stay.
The wellness tourism industry is becoming both larger and more differentiated, and its overall growth trajectory in the coming 10 years still leaves significant room for different positioning strategies to succeed simultaneously.
At one end we see heritage-rooted and accessible experiences that give back to the surrounding community such as Finland’s Sauna Village, that in addition to wellness offer cultural depth to travelers.
At the other, ultra-luxury operators like Soneva are in the business of subtraction to offer fewer but more meaningful experiences to wellness-oriented guests.
What unites both ends of this wide, wide spectrum is the rejection of generic wellness programming consisting of a “gym and granola” (one of the best quotes from the EHL Psychological Well-being in Hospitality Report that always tickles me).
Guests expect a more considered approach than an afterthought, and want the destinations they choose to support the well-being endeavors they have already undertaken in their private lives.