Inside the wellness tourism boom30 Images
Lavish holidays aren’t enough for wealthy vacationers anymore. Now they want their annual leave to heal their minds, bodies and souls as well. This season, The White Lotus has checked into a luxury wellness resort in Thailand, complete with health mentors, biomarker testing, stress management meditation, sensory deprivation tanks, personalised self-improvement plans, Reiki and a no-phone policy. “The hotel is a digital detox area – focus on being present, and each other, and self-care,” as health mentor Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) says in the first episode.
The White Lotus, now in its third series, written by genius Mike White, averages 15.5 million viewers – a week. Hotels and locations that have featured on The White Lotus have seen radical upswings in tourism with both positive and negative outcomes. It’s been coined The White Lotus Effect, and is having a direct impact on where we’re deciding to holiday. It’s also directly reflecting our current culture of extreme luxury wellness and the far-flung places we’re travelling to try to achieve it.
With the global rise in cortisol levels of young working people, we’re increasingly looking to optimise our limited time off. According to a study from Mental Health UK, the Burnout Report, 91 per cent of adults reported high or extreme stress levels last year. Most notably the paper revealed that “workers aged 18-24 were the most likely to take time off as a result of stress (35 per cent), compared to just 10 per cent of workers aged 55 and over.” CNBC corroborates those statistics, citing that “nearly half (48 per cent) of 18-to-29-year-olds said they feel drained compared with 40 percent of their peers aged 30 and up.
It’s unsurprising then that “wellness tourism” is the latest zeitgeist term taking over the travel industry. Valued at $814.6 billion in 2022, Forbes defines it as “activities aimed at improving and enhancing an individual’s physical, mental and spiritual well-being” from more common ones like yoga, spas, meditation and Pilates, to the more unusual. National Geographic notes “sylvotherapy (forest bathing), food bootcamps, chakra sessions, puppy yoga and laughter therapy were more popular than some standard spa offerings”.
The figures are pretty compelling: 94 per cent of travelers incorporate self-care into their travels and 59 percent solo wellness getaways. Josie, a 29 year old designer living in Amsterdam, booked all her annual leave in January. The first trip was a solo yoga retreat in Morocco. She explains the choice as “deciding to actually take time to just be with myself, calm my nervous system and check out for a whole week.” Shannon, a 34-year-old writer, meanwhile, has been considering a long extended sabbatical in Europe and squared the decision off as “rest can almost feel like a radical act these days – giving yourself permission to slow down, turn off your phone and just do nothing at all.”
I can attest to being one of the stressed young-ish people all this data is talking about. I had my cortisol levels tested not long ago, and unsurprisingly I was off the charts. It’s not something I’m proud of and so this year I decided to do things differently. I travelled to Palm Heights in the Cayman Islands to feel the effects of investing in my own health. Founded by Gabriella Khalil in 2019, it’s a hallowed, very viral, yellow-striped haven favoured by New York’s fashionistas and global trendsetters alike. You might have seen snaps of Bella Hadid in one of the many, many pools at its now cult spa, it’s where Chloë Sevigny had her hen party and supermodel Paloma Elsesser is a regular.
Palm Heights is a 70s design dream; it’s a 52-suite boutique hotel clad in oak and limestone, which no one leaves, because you don’t have to and you’d never want to. The site also boasts a rare book shop that sells coffee table archive fashion books as well as now defunct magazines from the 80s (ideal for creatives like myself who also need the time to feel inspired), pop-up outdoor cinema and several restaurants with world-class chef residencies. Most importantly it carries an incredible edit of skincare and wellness products, including the now near-impossible to buy in Europe – Costa Brazil, my favourite scent brand ever.
Typically on holiday, I’m found on a beach under a towel making image selects while the people around me relax. This trip would be different. Before arriving I’d booked into the Palm Heights Garden Club (their spa and gym centre). The offering was overwhelming and thrilling. The treatment menu has been devised in respect of the island’s history and on offer are “rituals, ceremonies, remedies and treatments from the old to the modern world, inspired by Grand Cayman’s natural environment and the various legacy of the islands’ peoples” with the intention of improving your “mind, gut, skin, or muscles.” The spa is a labyrinthine course of idyllic shaded treatment rooms, plunge pools, outdoor vitamin baths, saunas and an intimidating athletics training track, boxing ring (pro-boxer Ramla Ali held a residency previously) weights gym and reformer Pilates studio. I’m more of a gain versus pain gal, so, I opted for a psychic reading, sound healing, vitamin bath, ice bath and lymphatic drainage massage to combat the long haul flight.
Everyday I woke up and sat with the sun on my face for 30 minutes. I can’t say that I didn’t read my emails, but it was progress. I did bathing rituals daily, and braved the ice baths that amped up a cleansed and energised sense of self. Then came the psychic reading. It was so refreshingly modern I was caught off guard. Janine, the reader, was whip smart and business oriented – put it this way I wasn’t anticipating the acronym “ROI” to be thrown up by the cards – but it was, and I feel much clearer on my immediate career path thanks to Janine.
The fusion of old and new felt sincere and it’s something (that for me) so much of the wellness industry misses the mark on. The treatments felt both reflective and constructive: I was relaxed but was also ticking off a quiet psychological betterment list and so, as an overworked under-relaxed individual it was a good balance struck. The Meyer clinic this is not. So while you can take an infra-red sauna session, you can follow it with a perfect martini from their Coconut Club bar. It’s about balance, right?
While Palm Heights might be for the lucky few it’s a sign of the times. “Budget” wellness packages are becoming increasingly more available and accessible from yoga retreats in Spain from £334, to affordable “unwind” retreats across the UK and wild swimming holidays in Cornwall. Brooke, a 32-year-old content exec living in New York, is considering her first wellness vacation because of “the pace and pressure of work in 2025 means I’m finding it more important than ever to find the time and space to properly switch off, disconnect and listen to my body,” she says. “It’s not as simple as it sounds to slot into an everyday routine, so taking a trip to a resort that’s dedicated to holistic wellness where you can supercharge the act of restoration has never felt so appealing.”
There are obvious valid arguments both for and against wellness tourism. As Western travellers we’re only now formalising a more conscientious attitude to where and how we vacation. Ultimately my experience at Palm Heights opened my eyes up to just how successfully these kinds of sites can be run – see Palm Height’s Residency programme that supports, nurtures and hosts artists with links to the Caribbean. They also host retreats that cover a broad spectrum of rituals that honour the local cultures: from full moon ceremonies to natural black hair workshops.
In all honesty, I went in cynical about Palm Heights (how could one place do it all) and I left evangelistic, already planning my next trip. In the interim, adopting better rituals nearer to home to combat SAD, stress and anxiety – and not just saving those rituals for the rare holiday – worked for me. When I got home, I downloaded Portal, Escape Into Nature App from the Apple Store for £9 that immerses you in audio-environments like the Scottish Highlands or a beach in Hawaii. There’s breathing and focus episodes on there too. A trip abroad is undeniably a great way to make temporary room in your life for better processes and habits. The hard but positive truth is the best wellness work is done daily, in and around your weekly commitments.
