In 2013, the Global Spa Summit partnered with SRI International to produce one of the most consequential pieces of research the wellness industry had yet seen: a rigorous quantification of wellness tourism as a distinct global market, valued at $106 billion. The figure was striking, but the research delivered something more durable than a headline number — it delivered a framework for understanding why the market was failing to reach its potential.
Defining the Wellness Traveler
Before the GSS/SRI research, the term “wellness tourism” was applied so broadly as to be nearly meaningless. Operators used it to describe everything from destination spa retreats to hotel gyms. The 2013 study imposed the discipline the industry needed by establishing a clear definitional standard: wellness tourism is travel associated with the pursuit of maintaining or enhancing one’s personal wellbeing. That definition sounds simple, but its implications were significant — it excluded medical tourism, which carries a clinical, curative intent, and it drew a meaningful boundary between leisure travel that happened to include a spa visit and travel where wellbeing was a genuine motivation.
The research on spas, wellness and medical tourism made clear that conflating these categories was not merely an academic problem. It distorted market sizing, diluted positioning, and made it nearly impossible for destinations and properties to communicate a compelling value proposition to the right traveler at the right moment.
Primary vs. Secondary: The Distinction That Changed the Conversation
The most practically important contribution of the 2013 framework was its segmentation of wellness travelers into two groups: primary and secondary wellness travelers.
- Primary wellness travelers choose a destination or book a trip specifically because of its wellness offerings. The wellness experience is the reason for travel — the driving motivation behind the itinerary.
- Secondary wellness travelers are traveling for another purpose — business, family, culture, adventure — but actively seek to maintain their wellness routines and practices while away from home. They visit the hotel spa, maintain their fitness regimen, make mindful food choices, and look for restorative experiences alongside their primary travel purpose.
The insight that proved most surprising to the industry was that secondary wellness travelers represented the larger share of the market. The industry had long focused its energy on capturing the dedicated wellness seeker — the primary traveler booking a multi-week spa retreat. That traveler is real and valuable, but by fixating on this narrower segment, destinations and hospitality brands were overlooking the far more numerous secondary traveler who was already in their property, already open to wellness experiences, and largely being ignored.
Conceptual Confusion as a Market Barrier
The research identified the central obstacle holding back the $106 billion market in explicit terms: conceptual confusion and weak promotional models. Destinations did not know how to categorize or market their wellness offerings in a coherent way. Hotels bundled spa packages under vague lifestyle language that meant nothing to travelers researching a trip. Tourism boards lacked the frameworks to position wellness as a genuine draw alongside more established categories like cultural or adventure travel.
The result was a market that was larger than almost anyone had estimated — part of the nearly $2 trillion wellness economy — yet systematically underselling itself. Demand existed. Travelers were spending. But the supply side was speaking in a language travelers could not clearly hear or act on.
The Opportunity That Followed
The strategic lesson embedded in the 2013 research was straightforward, even if execution was not: the wellness tourism market rewarded clarity. Properties and destinations that could articulate a specific, credible wellness identity — and that recognized both their primary and secondary wellness guests as distinct audiences with distinct needs — were positioned to capture disproportionate share of a market their competitors were fumbling to describe.
The Global Spa Summit’s contribution was not simply to measure the market. It was to give the industry the vocabulary and the conceptual architecture to compete within it. That foundation shaped how wellness tourism was understood, promoted, and invested in for the years that followed.
Leave a Reply