Attribute it to the rising healthcare costs or the desire to remain fit; people irrespective of their geographical location are consciously thinking about adopting a healthy lifestyle. They are showing inclination towards healthy food, exercising, getting massages and availing yoga sessions to ensure their overall wellbeing. Here the wellness tourism or more specifically spa tourism comes to the picture.
Medical care is concerned with the treatment of illness and diseases, whereas the wellness care concentrates upon the preventive aspects of the diseases. It promotes prevention through a bevy of healthy practices including nutritional eating, exercise and treatments. The wellness care also offers the best health treatments to consumers while allowing them to travel to destinations that promise to promote their overall health and well-being.
As of now, spa tourism is all about being proactive in discovering new ways to promote a healthier, viable and stress free lifestyle. For starters, Spa tourism is a relatively new concept that owes its origin to the year 1986, when first spa opened its doors for tourists in need of relaxation. According to the modern trend, some institutions offering medical facilities are selling spa tourism and overall wellbeing packages as addition to their services. Willingly or unwillingly, these service providers are doing remarkably well in bringing medical treatment, wellbeing, fitness, spas tourism and sightseeing closer to each other and offering holistic solutions catering to the overall wellbeing of the individual.
Over the years, spa tourism has caught the fancy of many individuals scattered in all parts of the globe. The reasons for the exponential rise of spa tourism are aplenty and not hard to comprehend. The substantial increase in paying capacity of the middle class, the ever evolving attitude of the consumers toward health and travel are some of the most prominent reasons that have given the desired impetus to the global spa industry.
To substantiate the claims made in regard to the phenomenal rise of the spa tourism, we are offering you insight into latest figures revealed by recent study conducted by a non-profit research center, SRI International, that is. The researchers took into account distinct wellness sectors ranging from mind and body fitness to beauty and anti-aging, spas and workplace wellness, while compiling the report. Owing to unavailability of trustworthy data, compiling a report pertaining to wellness tourism is an arduous task, but one has reasons to trust the SRI report. The SRI report was commissioned by the annual Global Spa & Wellness Summit 2014 in Morocco, which was attended by over 400 wellness industry leaders from 45 countries.
- The study reveals that the global spa and wellness industry is worth an estimated $3.4 trillion in 2013, which is a commendable feat by all means.
- With more than 32,000 spas, Europe had the highest revenue of $29.8 billion, followed by the Asia-Pacific region with $18.8 billion and North America with $18.3 billion.
- Thermal/mineral springs generated $50 billion worldwide but the biggest industry sector was wellness tourism, or travel associated with maintaining or enhancing one’s personal well-being and health, which accounted for $494 billion.
- The global spa industry generated $94 billion last year, according to the Global Spa and Wellness Economy Monitor report, up from $60 billion in 2007.
- The report showed that the number of people taking international and domestic wellness tourism trips grew by 12 percent from 2012 to 2013. That was 36 percent faster than overall tourism trip growth, which is estimated at 9 percent.
The report by SRI International further states that nutrition and weight loss, preventative and personalized health, complementary and alternative medicine, and beauty and anti-aging treatments are the sectors that have revealed the greatest growth rate. In terms of addition of the new spas, the Middle East and Africa have emerged as the fastest emerging markets. These markets are eyeing a major chunk of international wellness traffic and are poised to grow further in the times to come.
Conventionally, Asia has been at the fore front of the wellness tourism, with a plethora of destination countries offering services complying with the global standards and norms. Thanks to the constant improvements in the healthcare sector, China and India have registered a commendable growth among them all. However, in Europe it is Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic states that are catering to the maximum number of wellness travellers.
