The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) highlights the key trends set to shape health and wellbeing in the coming year in its annual Future of Wellness report.
Building on last year’s insights, the report notes a continued divergence within the wellness industry. On one end of the spectrum, high-tech, medicalized, and hyper-optimized approaches to wellbeing—what GWS dubs “hardcare”—are gaining momentum, driven by advancements in longevity science, biohacking, and AI-driven diagnostics. At the same time, there is a counter-movement toward “softcare,” emphasizing simple, low-tech, and accessible wellness solutions that prioritize emotional and social wellbeing.
Highlights from the latest report include:
The Analog Wellness trend illustrates the demand for slower, low-tech lives. With the online world’s disinformation and general idea of “brain rot,” the predication for 2025 is that more people will stay offline, seizing retro, pre-digital hobbies, experiences, and tech. Digital disconnection and analog living trends are expected to impact everything from travel to government policy to home design.
Sauna Reimagined investigates the boom in, and reinvention of, one of the most ancient and social types of wellness.
Wellness on the Line is about the explosion of creative wellness experiences on cruises and rail journeys, a trend powered by the desire for slower, more mindful travel.
The Augmented Biology trend, detailing how a new fusion of body and machine (once the stuff of science fiction) is pushing the potential of people’s brains and bodies to superhuman levels.
The Supplement Paradox explores new science-grounded and high-tech directions in the vast supplement market, which look to help the trust issues present in that industry.
If spas and wellness destinations have always treated teens as a sidenote, the Teen Wellness trend explores an industry getting serious about their wellbeing, given the skyrocketing teen mental health crisis.
The Wellness Tackles Addiction trend identifies a new wellness category poised to further topple taboos around addiction. This covers new brands targeting harm reduction, luxury medical treatment centers with wellness resort programming, sober-curious retreats, and more.
The spa and wellness industries have played a role global water crisis, but the Watershed Wellness trend reveals how more wellness destinations will preserve and renew water supplies.
Longevity Redefines Work explores the radical changes that are coming to work and workplaces as the number of younger workers decreases and the 65-plus workforce grows, as well as how the wellness industry will be a key player in helping employees work longer and better.
The Middle East’s Wellness Ambitions explores the emergence of the region as a wellness leader, driven by wellness-focused national plans in GCC nations, and significant investments in preventative healthcare and sustainability, wellness tourism destinations, and sports-meet-wellness concepts.
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