Destination: Fit and well
IT’S one thing when hotels open fitness centres, but quite another when fitness centres open hotels.
Luxe gym Equinox is opening a hotel in New York’s new Hudson Yards neighbourhood next year in a move that embodies the evolution of wellness travel.
Most hotels have beefedup fitness options — you can book rooms with stationary bikes and rent workout clothes — but wellness travel has become much more than just keeping fit while on the road. Increasingly, it’s become the point of the journey. And it’s bringing in big dollars.
Whether it’s foraging for your own medicinal herbs in Peru, cycling the California coastline or spending several thousand dollars to workout alongside celeb trainer Tracy Anderson in Aspen, Colorado, wellness tourists made 691 million trips in 2015, according to the Global Wellness Institute.
In the past, wellness holidays straddled between starvationstyle boot camps or relaxing spa weekends to detox from an unhealthy lifestyle. But as selfcare has evolved into a daily goal, it’s found an obvious match in travel. International and domestic wellness tourism brought in $US563 billion ($NZ832 billion) in 2015, up from $US489 billion in 2013, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Wellness travel is expected to grow to $US808 billion by 2020.
The travel trend has mirrored the shift in retail. Gone are the days when shoppers head to a brickandmortar store to buy shoes they could buy online. Instead, they’re being lured to stores by experiences.
Similarly, holidaymakers are less excited about lying on the beach with umbrella drinks. They, too, want a more immersive experience, like a yoga meditation retreat or surf camp, to connect with others and revitalise themselves, experts say.
‘‘[Fitness has] gone from being an activity to a destination. It’s a purpose,’’ said Marshal Cohen, an analyst for the trend group NPD. ‘‘That’s a huge shift in spending. We’re not building wardrobes anymore. We’re building memories, and the photos we’re clicking on our phones and posting on social media are the fruits of our labour.’’
The Curtain Bluff resort in Antigua appointed a wellness concierge, whose job it is to design a fitness programme for guests at no extra charge, including everything from zumba to pilates. Amanpuri’s resort in Phuket, Thailand, created four wellness immersions, where guests can focus on fitness, weight loss, digestive cleanses or mental awareness during a three to 14night holiday. Offerings include reiki, an alternative stressreduction therapy, and lifecoaching.
The trend is even spilling over to cruises, once stereotyped as weightgaining vacations with bottomless buffets. Now, wellness can be the point of the cruise. Holland America Line, in partnership with O, The Oprah Magazine, has programmes for meditation and healthy living.
Cruise passengers can also combine wellness with sightseeing in ports of call. Take a shore excursion on a Regents Seven Seas cruise, for example, and you might end up doing yoga on a coconut plantation in Ko Samui, Thailand, or outdoor tai chi in Marseille, France, with a view of the sea on one side and a palace on the other.
‘‘We are seeing [cruise] lines of every ilk and size embrace healthy eating, fitness, all sorts of positive, new kinds of approaches to yoga and that kind of thing,’’ CruiseCritic editor at large Carolyn Spencer Brown said.
Savvy athleisure retailers are also seizing on it. Lululemon and Free People, a bohemian line popular with yogis, have branched into wellness tourism. Free People’s retreats started a few years ago where participants can exercise and try journalling or a tarot card workshop in spots such as Glacier National Park.
Zen travellers are shelling out thousands to follow celebrity trainers to exotic destinations. Tracy Anderson, who is Gwyneth Paltrow’s business partner and the trainer who shapes Jennifer Lopez’s famous booty, hosts a handful of intimate weekends each year with fewer than 40 guests. Participants sweat alongside the fitness guru and get to know her during firesidestyle chats in cities including Miami and Aspen. The weekends, priced at several thousand dollars, always sell out.
Shakira’s trainer Anna Kaiser leads a few trips a year, including recent stints in Ojai and Austin. And retreats for the hot workout du jour The Class by Taryn Toomey have all sold out, often within one hour. Toomey’s guests pay between $US2000 and $US6000 for her cathartic workouts with options for beachside massages and picturesque hikes in spots such as
Mustique and Mexico.
Roughly 100,000 wellness lovers attended uberpopular Wanderlust festivals across North America last year, partaking in everything from yoga and meditation to standup paddleboarding and spinning in spots like Oahu, Hawaii, and Squaw Valley, California.
Meghan Aftosmis loved Wanderlust’s Vermont event so much last year she’s heading back in a few weeks.
The 39yearold public relations executive from Delaware says she was eager to take yoga classes with one of the celebrity teachers. She also took a poetry session with a teacher she’d been following online.
‘‘It comes down to having an experience and, especially in the summer, I look for new adventures,’’ she said. — AP