Wellness tourism

[4][5] The market primarily includes services like lodging, transportation, activities (therapy, treatments and surgeries), and food and drink.

Players in wellness tourism may target healthy tourists who want to maintain and promote their health, or cure guests who want to recover from illness and seek healing of bodily ailments.

[14] Individual wellness practitioners and programs provide diverse services such as beauty treatments, exercise opportunities, including physical fitness and sports, healthy diet and weight management, health-related education, and relaxation and stress relief methods in luxurious, privately rent resort centers, small hotels or sections of larger hotels themed for the purpose all over the world.

Popular relaxation methods used to control stress include spiritual tourism, including meditation and yoga, whether classical or as exercise; Spiritual tourism is a growing practice that has evolved from a religious pilgrimage into traveling to a sacred spot in hopes of finding a special feeling.

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

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.

[8] 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.

Latin America and the Caribbean is the fourth largest region for wellness tourism in terms of both the number of trips and expenditures.

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.

[22][23] Yet it is difficult to quantify the health benefits since many of the wellness practices are unregulated, and the growing industry negatively impacts the destinations that travelers flock to.

Many Wellness Tourism practices are unregulated, and due to the breadth of countries and organizations in the industry, it is difficult to maintain standards across experiences.

[25] In 2016, over 1,500 wellness retreat locations in India admitted to dumping sewage directly into rivers, and Tulum faced similar issues.