Fitness hotel brand SIRO launched in 2024, marking the start of a 100-property rollout / photo: SIRO One Za’abeel
I’ll look at 2024 as the year that wellness truly broke into the core of hospitality, reshaping how we think about the travel business. While wellness has been a simmering macro trend for over a decade, I’ve never felt such a tangible leap forward in a single year. It’s as if the hospitality industry is reinventing itself in a virtual explosion of new wellness concepts and innovations.
30 years in the making The industry has come a long way in three decades. When I began in hospitality, most managers had ashtrays on their desks, chainsmoking as they worked. The majority of hotels didn’t have spas. When the GM of my first hotel, a Four Seasons in California, said we were opening one, my initial response was, “What’s a spa?” Wellness wasn’t even on the radar.
Spas started popping up, yet it took much longer for the industry to fully engage in wellness. I spent the early years of my career trying to convince owners, developers and hoteliers that spas were important. The ROI was hard to pin down. Spas were expensive to build and operate. While many hospitality companies debated whether wellness was a worthwhile investment, Mandarin Oriental was one of the first to put spa and wellness at the heart of its brand more than two decades ago.
Over the years, through some Darwinian process of evolution, the hotels with spas seemed to do better than those without. Owners begrudgingly began to agree they were necessary and now they’ve become essential to any high-end hotel, increasingly commanding prominent positions on-site. Today, it’s virtually impossible to find a luxury hospitality company that doesn’t include wellness as a core part of its brand.
Then came COVID-19. Mortality-awareness rose to an all-time high, we experienced unprecedented stress and our relationship with technology went from being extreme to obscene. Participants in Zoom video conference calls, for example, grew by a staggering 30-fold – from 10 million to 300 million. People came out of the pandemic craving wellness.
The hospitality industry, struggling to bounce back, eagerly embraced it as a fundamental component of a more experiential leisure offering to meet the needs of modern travellers. And that brings us to the current day.
Meteor shower of wellness In 2024, we saw innovations appearing in the marketplace like a meteor shower of wellness cascading down on luxury travellers. These new offerings promise to not only make people feel more energised and transformed from their stay but to help them live longer as well.
In the past year, longevity forerunners Clinique La Prairie opened outposts in Dubai and China and said it’s planning 50 sites in total. Kerzner launched its SIRO fitness and recovery hotel brand and revealed ambitions for 100 more properties. Canyon Ranch introduced Longevity8, a four-day US$20k retreat designed to give you “a road map for the entire journey to live longer”. Sbe unveiled The Estate, its luxury hotel concept based on longevity. Behind the scenes, Mandarin Oriental is working on Wellness 2.0, its own-branded guest-centric vision for the future, which combines physical, emotional, spiritual and even medical aspects of health and wellbeing.
Although the wellness trend in hospitality has been on a steady rise, it feels like we broke through some atmospheric ceiling in 2024. We’re soaring into a new space where the rules of gravity no longer apply. How fast will we accelerate? How far will we go? Nobody knows. But in 2024, the year of wellness, the possibilities have expanded exponentially.
Jeremy McCarthy has worked in the wellness industry for over 30 years. As group director of leisure, spa and wellness for Mandarin Oriental, he oversees facilities at 40 luxury hotels globally. Contact him with your views on Twitter @jeremymcc
Read more about leading longevity players
▪︎ Chiva-Som, Grey Wolfe, Rebase, Remedy Place, Six Senses and Surrenne: p48
Jeremy McCarthy has worked in the wellness industry for over 30 years. As group director of leisure, spa and wellness for Mandarin Oriental, he oversees facilities at 40 luxury hotels globally. Contact him with your views on Twitter @jeremymcc
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
View contents of Spa Business 2024 issue 4
Editor's letter: Pleasure time
It’s time to make ‘pleasure health’ the new ‘play’ to realise the true value of the wellness sector, says Katie Barnes
Spa people: Luuk Melisse
Sanctum's co-founder Luuk Melisse on going global with the unique, spiritual workout that originated in Amsterdam
Interview: Dean Kowarski
Virgin Active is transforming its gym business with 230 sites and 1.2 million members into a social wellness brand. The CEO reveals more details to Liz Terry
First person: Steamy situation
Cassandra Cavanah is moved to tears (and also a little nervous) as she joins hundreds of near-naked heat enthusiasts at this year's Aufguss World Championships
Promotion: TechnoAlpin: In touch
Sara Brenninger talks
to wellness expert
Alina Hernandez
about the power of
real snow to create
immersive touchless
wellness experiences
Interview: Fabian Dolman
How can operators make a successful business out of aufguss programmes? Thermen Resort's CEO gives some tips
Sponsored: Best of both
Alina Hernandez, Gharieni Group advisory board member, explains how Metawell – its portfolio of tech-forward mind/body technologies – is right on time for the next era of wellness
Sponsored: Elevate your business with EGYM
Transform your business with fully connected, personalised and data-powered solutions that drive results
for members, trainers and businesses
Sponsored: Outstanding in its field
RKF Luxury Linen has had a stellar year in 2024, hitting new standards of excellence with a raft of certifications
Promotion: Rest and repeat
Starpool is drawing on science, innovation and equilibrium to offer the industry’s leading recovery solutions
Sponsored: Iyashi Dôme's Oteire
Modern consumers demand solutions that blend cutting-edge technology with proven results, and Iyashi Dôme is rising to the challenge by redefining industry standards
First person: Sparkling Water
Mary Bemis is one of the first to visit the stunning new Sacred River Spa at Four Seasons Bali at Sayan
The MSpa Oslo series is a perennial bestseller in global markets. With innovative
engineering and premium performance, this completely portable spa line-up is expertly
designed to meet the needs of customers worldwide. [more...]
+ More featured suppliers
COMPANY PROFILES
We Work Well Inc
In 2019 Monica Helmstetter and Lucy Hugo founded the American hosted buyer event company We Work Wel [more...]
Fitness hotel brand SIRO launched in 2024, marking the start of a 100-property rollout / photo: SIRO One Za’abeel
I’ll look at 2024 as the year that wellness truly broke into the core of hospitality, reshaping how we think about the travel business. While wellness has been a simmering macro trend for over a decade, I’ve never felt such a tangible leap forward in a single year. It’s as if the hospitality industry is reinventing itself in a virtual explosion of new wellness concepts and innovations.
30 years in the making The industry has come a long way in three decades. When I began in hospitality, most managers had ashtrays on their desks, chainsmoking as they worked. The majority of hotels didn’t have spas. When the GM of my first hotel, a Four Seasons in California, said we were opening one, my initial response was, “What’s a spa?” Wellness wasn’t even on the radar.
Spas started popping up, yet it took much longer for the industry to fully engage in wellness. I spent the early years of my career trying to convince owners, developers and hoteliers that spas were important. The ROI was hard to pin down. Spas were expensive to build and operate. While many hospitality companies debated whether wellness was a worthwhile investment, Mandarin Oriental was one of the first to put spa and wellness at the heart of its brand more than two decades ago.
Over the years, through some Darwinian process of evolution, the hotels with spas seemed to do better than those without. Owners begrudgingly began to agree they were necessary and now they’ve become essential to any high-end hotel, increasingly commanding prominent positions on-site. Today, it’s virtually impossible to find a luxury hospitality company that doesn’t include wellness as a core part of its brand.
Then came COVID-19. Mortality-awareness rose to an all-time high, we experienced unprecedented stress and our relationship with technology went from being extreme to obscene. Participants in Zoom video conference calls, for example, grew by a staggering 30-fold – from 10 million to 300 million. People came out of the pandemic craving wellness.
The hospitality industry, struggling to bounce back, eagerly embraced it as a fundamental component of a more experiential leisure offering to meet the needs of modern travellers. And that brings us to the current day.
Meteor shower of wellness In 2024, we saw innovations appearing in the marketplace like a meteor shower of wellness cascading down on luxury travellers. These new offerings promise to not only make people feel more energised and transformed from their stay but to help them live longer as well.
In the past year, longevity forerunners Clinique La Prairie opened outposts in Dubai and China and said it’s planning 50 sites in total. Kerzner launched its SIRO fitness and recovery hotel brand and revealed ambitions for 100 more properties. Canyon Ranch introduced Longevity8, a four-day US$20k retreat designed to give you “a road map for the entire journey to live longer”. Sbe unveiled The Estate, its luxury hotel concept based on longevity. Behind the scenes, Mandarin Oriental is working on Wellness 2.0, its own-branded guest-centric vision for the future, which combines physical, emotional, spiritual and even medical aspects of health and wellbeing.
Although the wellness trend in hospitality has been on a steady rise, it feels like we broke through some atmospheric ceiling in 2024. We’re soaring into a new space where the rules of gravity no longer apply. How fast will we accelerate? How far will we go? Nobody knows. But in 2024, the year of wellness, the possibilities have expanded exponentially.
Jeremy McCarthy has worked in the wellness industry for over 30 years. As group director of leisure, spa and wellness for Mandarin Oriental, he oversees facilities at 40 luxury hotels globally. Contact him with your views on Twitter @jeremymcc
Read more about leading longevity players
▪︎ Chiva-Som, Grey Wolfe, Rebase, Remedy Place, Six Senses and Surrenne: p48
Jeremy McCarthy has worked in the wellness industry for over 30 years. As group director of leisure, spa and wellness for Mandarin Oriental, he oversees facilities at 40 luxury hotels globally. Contact him with your views on Twitter @jeremymcc
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
View contents of Spa Business 2024 issue 4
Editor's letter: Pleasure time
It’s time to make ‘pleasure health’ the new ‘play’ to realise the true value of the wellness sector, says Katie Barnes
Spa people: Luuk Melisse
Sanctum's co-founder Luuk Melisse on going global with the unique, spiritual workout that originated in Amsterdam
Interview: Dean Kowarski
Virgin Active is transforming its gym business with 230 sites and 1.2 million members into a social wellness brand. The CEO reveals more details to Liz Terry
First person: Steamy situation
Cassandra Cavanah is moved to tears (and also a little nervous) as she joins hundreds of near-naked heat enthusiasts at this year's Aufguss World Championships
Promotion: TechnoAlpin: In touch
Sara Brenninger talks
to wellness expert
Alina Hernandez
about the power of
real snow to create
immersive touchless
wellness experiences
Interview: Fabian Dolman
How can operators make a successful business out of aufguss programmes? Thermen Resort's CEO gives some tips
Sponsored: Best of both
Alina Hernandez, Gharieni Group advisory board member, explains how Metawell – its portfolio of tech-forward mind/body technologies – is right on time for the next era of wellness
Sponsored: Elevate your business with EGYM
Transform your business with fully connected, personalised and data-powered solutions that drive results
for members, trainers and businesses
Sponsored: Outstanding in its field
RKF Luxury Linen has had a stellar year in 2024, hitting new standards of excellence with a raft of certifications
Promotion: Rest and repeat
Starpool is drawing on science, innovation and equilibrium to offer the industry’s leading recovery solutions
Sponsored: Iyashi Dôme's Oteire
Modern consumers demand solutions that blend cutting-edge technology with proven results, and Iyashi Dôme is rising to the challenge by redefining industry standards
First person: Sparkling Water
Mary Bemis is one of the first to visit the stunning new Sacred River Spa at Four Seasons Bali at Sayan
Synergy – The Retreat Show, the global trade show for retreats, has launched a global research
initiative that will provide insights into the retreat sector from both consumer and industry
perspectives.
The Wellness Tourism Association (WTA) has published a non-regulatory global industry
framework designed to ensure the retreat market offers responsible experiences.
A new survey of UK and international spa practitioners shows that stress, burnout and
wellbeing concerns have caused one in three respondents to consider leaving the industry.
The UK's four Chief Medical Officers have published a refreshed edition of Physical activity
guidelines: UK Chief Medical Officers' report, updating the evidence that underpins the nation's
physical activity recommendations and placing greater emphasis on strength, balance, reducing
sedentary behaviour and, for the first time, supporting people taking weight loss medications.
Anna Bjurstam has left her role as Wellness Pioneer at Six Senses Hotels and Resorts and
launched a new wellness, longevity and “consciousness consultancy” called Wahayla.
Fairmont Cheshire, The Mere, has opened today (10 July) in the Northwest of England
with a
1,715sq m Fairmont Spa that has been designed using a ‘Wellness without Walls’
concept.
Wellness hotels generating less than US$1 million (€932,700, £785,200) – or 10 per cent of
total revenue from wellness and leisure – recorded the strongest RevPAR and TRevPAR growth
in 2025 across categories when compared with 2024, according to the latest Wellness Real
Estate Report by RLA Global, produced in partnership with P and L benchmarking firm HotStats.
Lefay Resorts, the portfolio of two luxury wellness properties in Italy, has added emotional
dance classes and group cold plunge sessions in response to market demand for social
connection.
The MSpa Oslo series is a perennial bestseller in global markets. With innovative
engineering and premium performance, this completely portable spa line-up is expertly
designed to meet the needs of customers worldwide. [more...]
+ More featured suppliers
COMPANY PROFILES
We Work Well Inc In 2019 Monica Helmstetter and Lucy Hugo founded the American hosted buyer event company We Work Wel [more...]
