Can wellness also include entertainment? I definitely think so, and we see that more and more spas in Europe are offering a ‘welltainment’ approach.

By enhancing your wellness with entertainment, you combine health and caring with the beauty of visuals, sounds, feelings and smells.

Studies show that people actually heal faster by seeing, smelling, tasting and listening to something beautiful.

Our ability to grasp perspectives other than our own is also what makes it so easy for us to enter an imaginative situation such as a story, and it’s within that story that we can guide every individual guest to positive thinking and emotional wellbeing.

VR will help with that as it is used more and more not only within the healthcare system, but also in spas and homes. VR has been in use for many years in hospitals to successfully reduce short-term and chronic pain and to relieve stress, and VR will be an efficient tool for spas to help the increasing unwell population take the first steps towards personal wellness.

Many experiences in a spa can already be categorised as ‘welltainment’: enjoying a good guided meditation, feeling the singing bowls through your chakras, exploring space with VR glasses in a floatation tank, music and sound therapy while you are in water, or feeling the story and heat of the powerful sauna aufguss.

As someone who frequently visits Haiti and has fallen in love with the island, I fully support it being highlighted as a ‘place to watch’ in the 2016 Spa Foresight™ (see SB16/3 p48).The destination is a rich, lush land abundant with natural hot springs and pure, sweet air – all supported by a genteel culture descended of Creole ancestry. Untouched by the modern world, this undeveloped, organic island – from its food to its forests – presents a unique opportunity to spa investors, owners and operators.

As with most Caribbean islands, it’s highly recommended that market entrants work with a reputable law firm that can wade through the legalities of title deeds and land use. But those who take a chance on a culture that is ready, willing and able to work, will be rewarded ten-fold.

Hurricane Matthew’s devastation, although profound, has not hindered the spirit of the island. Re-forestation, the first step, has begun, and more help is critical to complete the healing of the island.

For an environmentally aware visionary, this magical, off-the-grid wellness destination could be a dream come true.

Fast-forward into the near future – a green, sustainable wellness resort is completed: solar panels supply natural energy, rain barrels capture water, guests bathe in the natural hot springs and taste the local organic produce. The design is aligned with nature.

People in industrialised countries have achieved higher life expectancies than any generation before them. These ageing societies have completely different needs in terms of health and wellbeing. Today, it’s no longer poverty or epidemic diseases that cause sicknesses and early deaths in these countries, but rather, people’s accelerated and stressful lifestyles in de-naturalised environments.

Spas will therefore have to re-think their offerings. Considering these changes, spas no longer meet the actual needs of an overweight, stressed, sleep-deprived and burned-out society.

But spas have a tremendous opportunity to embrace these new lifestyle issues and implement specific offerings in their spa menus. A growing number of people are asking for concrete solutions rather than nice-to-have pampering sessions.

Forward-thinking spas should, therefore, help people to change their everyday lives and prevent these lifestyle diseases. Spas are the perfect places to do so by offering both physical help – through their therapists – and emotional support, through their specifically designed settings.

However, spas should not put their focus on preventing diseases, but on achieving optimal health, life energy and joy. Focusing on the positive aspects of life will attract and motivate people more than just living preventatively in the sense of not getting a disease.