We have seen an explosion in hotel wellness in recent years, from being on the periphery with spas and gyms to encompassing health, sustainability and the environment, with the pandemic acting as a catalyst.
Wellness has become a massive umbrella term and — with people now more aware of their health and well-being and that of those around them — it has become a driver for what we’re doing as a sector.
Alongside this rapid expansion has been growth in our ability to collect personal data on our health. We can track our activity, our sleep and what we consume, and it is encouraging us to think more and more about preventative health care and what we can do to improve our lives. This data is key to tailoring our own health and well-being needs; if we were to share it, it has the potential to allow hotels to tailor our stays, whatever their purpose.
If you’re wearing a sleep tracker, imagine being able to share that information with hotels so they can offer a different room setup and a different turndown service. Sleep is at the center of a hotel’s product; it makes sense for it to be personalized to every guest’s taste.
At the moment, hotels are playing catch-up with wellness trends. Interesting, different touchless spa treatments such as cryotherapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy are only seen in a very few hotels. But as people start to integrate them into their everyday lives and demand them, we will see them in hotels. I have had Zoom calls with people in hyperbaric chambers, integrating those treatments into their working days — wellness is no longer just about the leisure market.
The real opportunity is around being able to provide your preferences before you arrive at the hotel. It’s not about booking the spa before you arrive, it’s about what else the hotel can offer in the surrounding area or bring into the property for you. Wellness is a huge part of me and my family’s ambition for travel, and I look for brands based on my preferences for wellness trends. If guests know they can do a certain type of Brazilian jujitsu during their stay, it’s not only driving revenue, it’s helping to drive bookings.
If I know that by sharing my personal information with a hotel they will act on that and help me plan a trip to my tastes, that’s a real hook and that’s what we are doing with brands such as Mandarin Oriental. For these flags, exceptional stays are what sets them apart. That starts long before the guest’s arrival, collaborating with them to create a streamlined, curated experience which is personal to them and easily accessible by both guest and property.
Loyalty is another area with great potential. Depending on your loyalty level, you should be able to share your preferences and data about your different wellness interests so the hotel can create the food and beverage and excursions you would be interested in, either as part of the stay or part of the hotel. This drives ancillary revenue for the hotel, but even more importantly, generates the true loyalty which comes with an exceptional experience.
Gathering this data will be the challenge, although I think guests will see the benefits of sharing what they are collecting; we can already see that with the volume of Strava data being shared online. Centralization of data will help this to accelerate.
When you check into a hotel now, you might be offered a running route if you ask and sent a notification for the best burger in the area. That’s no good if you’re a vegan who's into taekwondo. If you know about the guest before they arrive, you can treat them as an individual, and that’s the first step to wellness and the first step to real service.
John Attard is a U.K.-based hospitality consultant with Alliants. During his career, he has worked as director of leisure and spa for both Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International.
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