A curated collection of can’t-miss news from this week, including wellness travel trends and more. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox.
Wellness is the new luxury when it comes to global travelers. People are ready to splurge on good-for-the-soul vacations, according to new research. Skift’s Lebawit Lily Girma reports: “It’s a shift that tour operators noted this summer with a steep surge in demand for wellness trips, with increased bookings already taking place for some, and predictions of an impending boom in wellness vacations to the tune of $919 billion worldwide by 2022.”
The pandemic is a major factor in the wellness travel boom, as revealed by the Wellness Tourism Association’s (WTA) 2021 Wellness Travel Consumer Survey. “The unprecedented challenges the COVID-19 pandemic created for us on an individual level have led society to embrace ideas about enhanced self-care and personal wellness,” writes TravelPulse’s Laurie Baratti. “It’s a mentality that is also predicted to influence people’s travel preferences moving forward.”
Hotels and resorts are getting into the wellness swing of things, too. Well + Good reports: “Since the onset of the pandemic, a number of hotels have struck partnerships with fitness-, nutrition-, and recovery-oriented companies to institute new expert-backed programs designed to help guests maintain healthy habits they adopted during lockdown or launch new ones aligned with future wellness goals.”
And what about airlines? Some are looking to offer travelers wellness experiences while flying, discovers Travel + Leisure. “The new Singapore Airlines partnership with Golden Door includes new menus, in-flight exercises, and sleep education, and will launch on Los Angeles-to-Singapore (SQ37) flights in January before expanding to nonstop flights to Singapore from San Francisco, New York JFK, and Seattle.”
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