At the Global Wellness News media event in New York City, co-anchored by Nancy Davis and Susie Ellis, Global Wellness Summit (GWS) released its annual global wellness trends report, The Future of Wellness 2022. The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings report from the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) was also shared.
The 110-page trends report delves into the major shifts expected in nutrition, wellness travel, wellness real estate, women’s health, men’s wellness, healthcare, technology, sustainability, and spas.
2022 Wellness Trends
1. Dirt-y Wellness
Expect a renewed focus on restoring the health of the world’s soil and its impact on our own health and wellness.
2. Toxic Muscularity Comes Clean
Male body issues finally get the attention they deserve.
3. From Wellness Tech to Technological Wellness
A fresh perspective on digital health.
4. Senior Living Disrupted
Retirement living is being reimagined.
5. Wellness Travel: Seekers, Welcome
Intention is the future of travel.
6. Innovative Tech Closing the Gender Gap in Medical Research
Artificial intelligence, apps, and wearables will collect data to address women’s health conditions.
7. Urban Bathhouses & Wellness Playgrounds
Affordable and accessible wellness is coming to a city near you.
8. Next-Gen Naturalism
There will be a return to self-reliance.
9. Health & Wellness Coaching Gets Certified
Coaches trained in motivating healthy changes will prove to be the missing link in healthcare and wellness.
10. Wellness Welcomes the Metaverse
Immersive and health and wellness experiences are on the rise.
“If it’s always daunting to predict trends in the fast-moving wellness space, it’s especially so two years into a pandemic where the long-promised ‘post-pandemic world’ is becoming visible but is repeatedly delayed,” says Ellis, GWS chair and CEO. “One thing that this forecast makes very clear is that the future of wellness will be anything but a ‘restart’ of 2019. What consumers need most, what they perceive as ‘true wellness,’ has profoundly changed.”
2022 Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings
In The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings, GWI measured the wellness economies of 150 nations. It is considered a companion to The Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond COVID, which provided a global update on all 11 sectors of the wellness market. It found that the economy is worth $4.4 trillion and forecast it to reach $7 trillion by 2025.
“This last year, the GWI generated country-level data for all 11 wellness sectors. So now, for the first time, we can answer the question everyone asks: How big is the total wellness market for each country and who ranks highest?” says Ophelia Yeung, GWI senior research fellow. “Which nations are growing, which are shrinking? How do national wellness markets differ and why? This report is the first to answer these questions.”
Interested to know where consumers spend the most on wellness? That would be Switzerland followed by Iceland and then the U.S.
“These new rankings reveal the countries that spend the most on wellness–important information for governments and businesses. But the size of a wellness market does not necessarily capture which countries are most ‘well’: which nations have the best health outcomes or fair access to wellness,” says Katherine Johnston, GWI senior research fellow. “There’s much research to do. Who is benefitting from the growth of the wellness economy in each country, and who is not? What’s the relationship between the wellness market and the health and wellbeing of a nation’s population? What can governments and policymakers do to bring more wellness to more people? This will be the focus of our November 2022 report on wellness and policy to be released at the Global Wellness Summit in Tel Aviv.”
