The Global Wellness Summit predicts that the
European wellness industry will face competition from the Americas and Asia in
the coming future. Suggests that there is a need to innovate and create new
wellness offerings.
Europe
pioneered the holistic wellness concept, and is the largest spa, wellness
tourism and beauty market in the world. The Global Wellness Summit asked CEOs
of travel, spa and beauty companies plus economists and researchers to forecast
where wellness is headed in Europe.
Europe
has long been the world's wellness leader with Austria, Germany and Switzerland
inventing the holistic wellness concept that extends far beyond spa, to include
nutrition, fitness, traditional medicine, mindfulness and a powerful connection
to nature (kurs, baths, healing systems, hydrotherapy, herbalism, nutrition and
mental wellness). Europe faces competition from the Americas and Asia so has to
innovate and create new wellness offerings.
Tourism
will be Europe's fastest growing sector – and wellness travel will grow even
faster. With increased stress, an aging population, and people's quest for
total wellbeing, over the next decades European wellness tourism will grow
significantly faster than tourism overall. The Global Wellness Institute
estimates a 7.3% annual growth rate between 2012-2017. The wellness travel
outlook is very positive in mature Northern and Middle European nations will
grow even faster in Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal) provided their
economies continue to strengthen their recovery.
European
wellness resorts will refocus on deep authenticity, peace, quiet and nature.
People face unprecedented stress and 24/7 digital connection and noise.
Radically pressured lives create new desires: for complete time out,
uncompromising peace and quiet, and to be close to the forces of nature.
European wellness/spa resorts will increasingly shift their focus from glitzy,
amenity-driven, exotic luxury to meet these powerful needs. Everything – from
resort design/environments, guest rooms, spa treatments and fitness experiences
– will shift to intense authenticity and nature.
Wellness
retreats will appear on top of mountains, deep in the woods and snow, on the
water, in the form of everything from tree houses to houseboats. Spas,
treatments and saunas will emerge from the basement to burst out into the trees
as new nature cocoons. The new luxury: sleeping in a glass igloo, wrapped in
reindeer skins, with the Northern Lights sparkling above. Wellness retreats are
being developed in former monasteries (Schloss Mondsee, Austria; Eremito,
Italy) offer: calm, simplicity, wild nature, spirituality and self-awareness.
Bathing,
and going on long (10-day-plus) kurs, has always been a way of life in Europe.
The latest versions are shorter. Mini-kurs that pack in a 2-3 hour bathing
ritual, spa treatments, nutritious food, movement, relaxation, and
meditation/mindfulness (in one day or two) will be trendy. Taking the waters
and visiting spa resorts will happen in fewer days as busier Europeans are
short on time, and with growing unease about air travel, people are staying
closer to home.
Wellness
holidays in their own country has been popular in Scandinavia for some time,
and is spreading across Europe.
A wave of
new wellness properties and traditions will be discovered by the world.
European wellness seekers will increasingly head east from the Baltic to the
Black Seas, and out to the Asian Caspian Sea. This region will undergo wellness
resort development. So many forces are driving this eastward Wellness
Renaissance. Leading global wellness brands are making moves into the wellness
markets in Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro,
Slovakia, Slovenia – and smaller CIS states. The region has a centuries-old,
spa and bathing culture, so the modernisation of huge, former Soviet
medical-wellness health resorts is underway.
Chains of
branded hot springs resorts will stretch across Eastern Europe from Poland to
Moldova. These will be thermal water retreats integrating medicine and
wellness, and capitalizing on Eastern Europe's, the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Slovenia and Slovakia's abundant natural springs and kurs, long-established
medical-wellness retreats, and cultural cities.
Near-medical,
high-tech, device-driven beauty procedures are a booming market in the Americas
and Asia, and about to become one in Europe. European hotel spas will
increasingly offer sophisticated instant result treatments using cutting-edge
beauty technology – such as a computer precisely analysing a skin condition,
followed by an intensive microdermabrasion peel, ultrasound or needling, it
will mean adding high-tech beauty to the already high-touch menus. But the
international differences will remain huge: while Asia and the USA are
embracing ever-more-invasive procedures, Central Europe is getting accustomed
to microdermabrasion and ultrasound. The European beauty consumer wants
high-impact results, but won't accept any downtime after a treatment.
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