Global Wellness Summit experts recently identified future directions for the $3.7 trillion wellness industry. Here are their top eight wellness trends for 2017.
1. Sauna Reinvented
The reinvention of sauna is underway with the rise of social saunas, quirky pop-up saunas floating on lakes or hanging from bridges, and trendy urban sweat lodges that serve up infrared sauna treatments.
2. Wellness Architecture
This trend involves creating and reengineering buildings to improve the health of residents from indoor air quality to sleep and acoustics.
3. Silence
In a world of 24/7 connectedness, wellness destinations are embracing a dramatic approach to ‘turning off’ the noise, resulting in true silence. New wellness monasteries are also on the rise with retreats opening in and infused with the silent, contemplative values of ancient sacred spaces.
4. Art & Creativity Take Center Stage
The creativity-wellness-spa connection is making a comeback with more art, music, literature, and dance at the center of more wellness experiences.
5. Wellness Remakes Beauty
Beauty makes up $1 trillion of the $3.7 trillion wellness economy and is remaking itself to meet the needs of a wellness-oriented population focused on authenticity and inner beauty, from an increase of ingestible beauty-boosters and clean, organic cosmetics to medical evidence for a new neuroaesthetics.
6. The Future Is Mental Wellness
Healthy mind approaches are on the rise in the wellness industry as depression and anxiety is skyrocketing around the world. Wellness retreats and spas are adding neuroscientists and psychotherapists to their properties. Meditation is not only radically mainstreaming, but also spawning creative new categories.
7. Embracing the C-Word
The wellness world is waking up to the needs of cancer patients, and wellness practitioners are opening their healing practices to these clients.
8. Beyond the Ghettos of Wellness
The new wave of low-cost wellness will offer more affordable healthy supermarkets and spa chains, while more wellness businesses are also giving back to the less fortunate.