HOW TO USE CURRENT HEALTH & WELLNESS TRAVEL TRENDS IN THE HOSPITALITY SEGMENT

This is an excerpt of our Hospitality e-book that we enriched with recent data around current industry trends. If you want to get more complimentary content, you’ll find a download link for the full e-book at the bottom of this page. We hope you enjoy the read.

In a nutshell:

• Mental & physical health are global trends that get increasingly important travellers are no exception!
• There are multiple options to help guests maintain healthy physical routines throughout their stay – consider that there is a subset of trends that exercisers are looking for while at home and travelling. Watch out for the annual ACSM fitness trends and evaluate how these can contribute to a better wellbeing experience of your guests.
• Remote working has made its way to normality. There’s evidence that phenomena like Bleisure travel and workation stays will become a new norm in business travel as well – it already is extremely popular for younger generations of employees, let alone freelance workers or digital nomads.
• Privacy will remain a relevant concern for travellers, not only for sanitation purposes but more importantly for the positive effects it has for mental health. 

How do the above trends translate into opportunities for Hospitality providers?

• Workout tracking, on-demand training and daily hotel room workout suggestions can be good options to help guests who want to continue their wellbeing journey throughout their stay.
• Dedicated workout spaces can be as big or small as the space on your property allows, consider inroom fitness options as well.
• Think about the possibility to book personal training sessions or private time in your fitness room.
• Provide on-demand workout content on your equipment or the TV in guests` rooms.
• Equip a number of rooms with trending equipment, such as treadmills or bikes offering on-demand workout content, or a set of free weights that is perfectly in line with the individual strength training trend > remember: According to Expedia Group, 70% of wellbeing travellers say they’re willing to pay extra for properties that provide their favourite amenities and services.
• Maintain a solid technical infrastructure (WiFi over wired internet) that provides sufficient bandwidth for video conferencing – and let your potential guests know about it!
• Consider offering rooms with additional amenities for bleisure or workation guests, like a bigger desk, writing materials, the option to book a second screen, a printer, an ergonomic chair, healthy lunch boxes or similar.
• If you don’t have a dedicated space for a gym on your property, converting two rooms into a small gym is a costeffective way to boost your offer.

Wellness and fitness trends are constantly changing and went through a radical alteration just recently. Research suggests that one in five people exercised more during the pandemic than at the start.

The number of people participating in exercise at home is expected to increase by 69-72% compared with 2020 levels; for gym workouts, the increase is circa 21%.

The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) expects wellness travellers to focus even more on wellness-driven choices, activities and exploration, such as hotels and accommodation that offer the promise of good sleep, soundproofing, circadian lighting, and air filtration. They’ll also look for fitness and physical activities, healthy foods, mind-body and mental wellness modalities.

What today’s wellness travellers are looking for:

• mind-body and wellness modalities
• fitness and physical activities
• good sleep
• air filtration
• healthy food

We are also seeing an increase in the so-called ‘bleisure’ mindset (business plus leisure), which influences everything, from business travellers’ desired destinations to the types of accommodation they seek. This also means the tools that bleisure tourists need for both leisure and business are evolving.

Bleisure = Business + Leisure

Bleisure describes a combination of business and leisure travel. Typically, a business stay is extended for a couple of days in order to explore the visited city, meet family or friends living in the region or travel along after the business meeting.
Bleisure is becoming increasingly popular, especially among Millennials and younger generations of employees.

Remote working looks set to stay permanently for many companies, and this new way of working could change the behaviour of hotel guests and their purpose for traveling. We might even see a rise in ‘workation stays’.

Workation = Work + Vacation

Workation is a blend of work and vacation. Compared to bleisure stays, workation typically covers a longer period of time and can be organized in a variety of different ways – depending on the mutual agreement between employer and employee.

What we do for exercise has changed too. The ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) listed online training, wearable technology, bodyweight training, outdoor activities and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as the top five fitness trends of 2021, but this has changed in 2022 and hotels need to make sure they keep up.

According to ACSM, the top five trends in 2022 are:

• wearable technology
• home exercise gyms
• outdoor activities
• strength training with free weights
• exercise for weight loss 

It’s important that hotels understand these trends and stay agile - yet critically they need to be able to transfer this into tangible improvements to the guest's journey, and provide optimized amenities or equipment to deliver experiences that satisfy their guests’ new needs.

Learn more about how to create delightful wellbeing experiences for your guests that help to increase your RevPAR and generate repeat booking – download the full e-book here.

Do you want to discuss any of the above options in further detail or get a better understanding about how current fitness and traveller trends can be merged into a unique wellbeing offering for your guests? We’re here to help! Our hospitality experts are looking forward to hearing from you.