Wellness Industry Statistics & Facts

• Wellness tourism is a $639 billion market in 2017, projected to reach $919 billion by 2022.
• Wellness tourism grew by 6.5 percent annually from 2015–2017, more than twice as fast as tourism overall (3.2 percent annually, based on Euromonitor data).
• World travelers made 830 million international and domestic wellness trips in 2017, representing 17 percent of all tourism expenditures.
• International wellness tourists on average spent $1,528 per trip, 53 percent more than the typical international tourist. Domestic wellness tourists spent $609 per trip, 178 percent more than the average domestic tourist.
• Secondary wellness travelers account for 89 percent of wellness trips and 86 percent of expenditures.

• Wellness real estate is a $134 billion global market in 2017, projected to grow to $198 billion in 2022.
• The sector grew by 6.4 percent annually from 2015–2017.
• Wellness real estate represents about 1.5 percent of the total annual global construction market and about half the size of the global green building industry.
• The top five markets are the United States ($52.5 billion), China ($19.9 billion), Australia ($9.5 billion), UK ($9.0 billion) and Germany ($6.4 billion).
• There are 740 wellness lifestyle real estate and communities built, partially built, or in development across 34 countries.
• GWI estimates that sales price premiums for wellness lifestyle real estate developments average 10–25 percent over conventional residential developments.

• Workplace wellness is a $48 billion market in 2017, projected to grow to $66 billion in 2022.
• The sector has been growing by 4.8 percent annually from 2015–2017.
• GWI estimates that only 10 percent of the world’s workers have access to workplace wellness programs and services, mostly concentrated in North America and Europe.
• GWI estimates that workforce unwellness (chronic disease, work-related injuries and illnesses, work-related stress, and employee disengagement) may cost the global economy 10–15 percent of economic output every year.

• In 2017, there were over 149,000 spas, earning $93.6 billion in revenues and employing nearly 2.5 million workers.
• The spa sector has been growing by 9.9 percent annually from 2015–2017, and it is projected to reach $128 billion in 2022.
• The top five markets are United States ($20.8 billion), China ($8.2 billion), Germany ($6.7 billion), Japan ($5.7 billion) and France ($3.6 billion).
• GWI projects that in order to staff the growing global spa business, the industry will need an additional 300,000 trained spa therapists and 54,000 experienced spa managers/directors (above the current level) by 2022.

• There are an estimated 34,057 thermal/mineral springs establishments operating in 127 countries.
• Thermal/mineral springs businesses earned $56.2 billion in revenues in 2017, and they employed an estimated 1.8 million workers.
• This sector has been growing by 4.9 percent annually from 2015–2017, and it is projected to reach $77 billion in 2022.
• The thermal/mineral springs industry is heavily concentrated in Asia-Pacific and Europe, which together account for 95 percent of industry revenues and 94 percent of establishments.
• Top markets include China ($17.5 billion), Japan ($12.8 billion) and Germany ($7.2 billion).

Key findings:

• A natural preoccupation with beauty can contribute to unfair judgments of personality and character attributes, such as intelligence and trustworthiness.
• People make automatic inferences about a person’s personality when they look at a face.
• Men are especially susceptible to adverse biases.
• Concepts that bridge beauty and wellness include nutrition, fitness and products.