SpaFinder Wellness has revealed a preview of its 10th annual Trends Report, which forecasts top trends that will impact the spa and wellness industry and shape consumer experiences around the globe.
1. Healthy Hotels: In 2013 and beyond, what constitutes a true vacation will be redefined and hospitality will be rewritten. We’ll see an explosion of new wellness-everywhere hotel chains and environments becoming more mainstream.
2. The Mindfulness Massage: A creative blend of two effective approaches, mindfulness and bodywork, the Mindfulness Massage is a more profound experience that can help people relax more deeply and quickly. Rather than lying on the massage table with a mind full of chatter from the stresses of the day, the Mindfulness Massage uses breath work and techniques such as body scans, where attention is brought to every part of the body and the action of the therapists’ hands. This two-way symphony, directed by a therapist who understands mindfulness, offers guidance on how to take the massage to a new mindful level.
3. Earthing: As modern-day humans become more cut off from nature, “earthing” specifically refers to the
movement promoting direct contact with the earth’s electron-rich surface (walking barefoot, etc.).
4. Spa-Genomics … Telomeres and Beyond: Humans have 30,000 genes and a three billion-letter DNA code. The future of medicine is mining this information to identify breakthrough approaches to support a new age of predictive, personalized medicine grounded in each person’s unique genetic profile.
5. Authentic Ayurveda and Other Ancient Revivals: Expect more aggressively-authentic and comprehensively-executed global wellness experiences at spas with a distinctly ancient look, feel and language – and a far more expansive, exotic menu of wellness traditions.
6: Color Self-Expression: In 2013, self-expression will be most intensely played out around color. Because color is easily applied and relatively inexpensive, self-transformation will be painted on.
7. Inclusive Wellness: The future bodies welcomed at spas will look more like bodies in the real world. With more than one billion people who are formally disabled and a massively graying global population, the industry will shift focus from luxe-pampering to delivering wellness to persons of all age and ability levels.
8. Label Conscious Fitness: The name-brand fitness wave has been around for decades. But today, as the fitness market expands as quickly as the world’s waistlines, an explosion of fitness labels distinguishes products and programs – and serves as a shortcut for instant recognition in an oversaturated market full of similar choices.
9. Men … From Barbers to Brotox: Dramatically more men – from Beverly Hills, to Berlin, to Beijing – are having more serious work done at medspas and plastic surgery offices, as injectables, love handle remedies and advanced new surgery technologies make for little downtime and telltale scars.
10. Where the Jobs Are: High-tech is a much-discussed job-creation savior, but there has been little talk about the growing talent-needy, job-rich spa and wellness industry. With the $2 trillion-plus pan-wellness market spanning fitness, alternative medicine and spa continuing to grow, spas simply cannot find enough people with the right skills to fill spa-management, director or therapist jobs. This need promises to expand in years ahead as the world continues its shift from a manufacturing to a service economy – and people, health care institutions and governments recognize the effectiveness of spa/wellness programs and experiences.
SpaFinder Wellness is a wellness discovery engine. For more information, visit www.SpaFinder.com.
The full 60-plus-page report, including an analysis of factors influencing each trend and examples of early trend adopters, will be released on January 15, 2013.