Health & Wellness Tourism Industry: A Reflection

Wellness tourism can be defined as travelling for the purpose of promoting health and well-being of oneself through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities. While wellness tourism is often called medical tourism because health being the main motivating factor for the traveler, wellness tourists are proactive in seeking to improve or maintain health and quality of life, often focusing on prevention, while medical tourists generally travel reactively to receive treatment for a diagnosed disease or condition. Most consumers apply the term “wellness” to anything that makes one feel good or that is healthy which explains its boom during the recent recession in 2007/2008. Within the tourism scope itself, wellness tourism is a growing “new trend” or the next big thing and has grown at an impressive rate. The modern concept of wellness is very much derived from the Western (U.S. and European) traditions and the concept of wellness can be traced to the ancient civilizations of Asia, Greece, and Rome.

The rise of the “wellness” concept can be attributed to two factors, firstly of which the World Health Organization (WHO)’s drive to integrate “well-being” and “fitness” in to its global health policy. Secondly, the overall education of people has increased the awareness of personal health. So therefore, tourism service providers such as luxury hotels and spas have been developed to cater to these customers by providing services such as spa and health treatments, hot springs, occupational health therapy, beauty treatments, sports facilities, spiritual activities, massages and rehabilitation programs.

Therefore, within the US$3.2 trillion global tourism industry, the health & wellness tourism industry currently estimates at a total of US$438.6 billion, which is about 14 percent of the entire tourism market [SRI International]. The economic growth in Asia, the Middle East and other developing countries have played an extensive role in the growth of the wellness