The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) has released its 2024 Future of Wellness report.

The annual report predicts changes in the health, wellbeing and spa industries and what will make waves in wellness in the year ahead.

Predictions include a new focus on postpartum wellness, the growth of social and emotional wellness for men and a drive towards climate-adaptive wellness. The report also focuses on the longevity megatrend and weight loss drugs.

The report’s authors state that “in the 15 years that the GWS trends team has been analysing the wellness space, there have been more shakeups in 2023 than in the last decade.

“This trends report illustrates how there is no longer one wellness narrative or unifying trend.”

Wellness has never been such a priority for people but what kind of wellness – and for whom – is undergoing transformation.

Picture credit: Heart Space by Krista Kim

Hardcare vs softcare

The 2024 Future of Wellness report argues that the wellness landscape is increasingly defined by very different, even contradictory, markets and mindsets. The GWS has labelled these ‘hardcare’ and ‘softcare.’

Hardcare describes the new hyper-medical, high-tech, expensive wellness market. Softcare captures consumers’ growing desire for lower pressure, simpler, less expensive wellness, where emotional and social wellbeing matter most.

Younger generations are already pushing back against high-pressure, commodified wellness. True wellness in the coming year, says the report, will be a messier, more joyful, simpler and cheaper affair.

European Spa brings spa you a summary of the 10 predicted wellness trends.

Trend #2

Climate-adaptive wellness

The GWS is predicting a wave of innovations to cool our bodies, homes and cities in a bid to counteract the continued heating up of the planet.

Climate-adaptive wellness will see cooling approaches in architecture and design, more green space, tree cover and rooftop gardens.

The report suggests smart-tech cooling clothing will go mainstream, as will wearables that monitor the body’s heat indicators, from core temp and hydration to electrolytes. We will also see the continued development of climate-adaptive beauty.

In terms of climate-adaptive travel, the GWS sees people swapping beaches and deserts for mountains, the Mediterranean for Scandinavia, and summer holidays for autumn or spring ones.

In the traditional wellness space, the prediction within the Future Trends report is that there will be a new focus on hot/cold therapy’s role in the body’s thermoregulation.

It’s suggested that many hotels and resorts will introduce cooler night-time wellness programming such as star-gazing and full-moon yoga.

Trend #4

The Home as high-tech health hub

In previous years there has been an increased focus on wellness-centric home amenities like meditation rooms and cold plunge pools.

Now, the GWS predicts homes will become multifaceted health hubs, with medical-grade health-monitoring systems and smart furnishings that adjust in real-time to individual wellbeing needs.

The home as high-tech health hub is a futuristic trend within the wellness real estate sector, the fastest-growing wellness market of all: now worth $398 billion and forecast to grow to $887.5 billion by 2027.

Trend #6

The power of the pilgrimage

The 2024 Future of Wellness report predicts a continuation of the growth in walking and making a purposeful connection with nature.

A record numbers of travellers are going on hikes infused with spiritual exploration and cultural heritage and these ‘pilgrimages’ – which engender slow, meditative travel – are a trend for the year ahead.

The report suggests that savvy resorts will offer wellness programmes which incorporate walking journeys between sacred sites, perhaps with participation in religious services such as meditating with monks.

Trend #7

The rise of postpartum wellness

While true postpartum wellness would mean a dramatic change in the current post-birth experience, with access to an integrated medical and wellness team that could support new parents, the GWS is predicting a rise in luxe postpartum retreats.

Comprehensive postpartum wellness is now taking many directions. Increasingly, ‘posh’ postpartum retreats are delivering days or weeks of postpartum recovery (at a price).

New apps such as Mavida Health are addressing the mental health of new parents and femtech startups are dedicating their offer to postpartum care – from C-section recovery to pelvic floor care products.

Trend #9

Immersive art for wellness

The GWS suggests we are entering an era of multi-sensory, wildly immersive art, which allows spectators to engage all their senses and to transform their mental wellbeing.

Museums, hotels and spas are incorporating multi-sensory art experiences into their offerings. In doing so, they are prioritising wellness as an integrated offering.

Six Senses resorts, for example, are creating multi-sensory somatic experiences, like bio-alchemy sculptures infused with scents, and flotation experiences suffused with ocean sounds..

The report suggests adaptive art will continue to take hold and push the boundaries of what sensory immersion and art-as-wellness can mean.

Trend #10

Under the radar

GWS Chair and CEO, Susie Ellis, shares some of her emerging themes to watch in the final trend section of the report.

These include destigmatising mental health issues and creating new solutions, given the skyrocketing global rates of mental un-wellness.

The need for more mental wellness solutions percolated across last year’s Global Wellness Summit, with Simone Biles chronicling how mental struggles necessitated her withdrawal from the 2020 Olympics in her keynote.

Amy McDonald, CEO at Under a Tree Consultancy, also argued we must lower age limits at wellness centres and spas, so teens can benefit from evidence-based healing treatments.

Ellis also flags a new future of ‘Blue Zones 2.0,’ where communities will actively engineer environments that make it natural to make healthy choices.

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