Eco Therapy and Wellness Holidays
holiday
“It’s official: beer is out, carrot juice is in. While the newspapers tell us that 29 UK boozers now close every week, smoothie bars and organic cafes continue to pop up, and it seems our appetite for spiralising, juicing and detoxing just can’t be sated.
It’s affecting decisions about how to holiday, too. The Global Wellness Institute reports the worldwide wellness market has grown 74% in the past four years, and it’s now worth more than $439 billion, which makes it one of the fastest-growing sectors in travel.” Says Aby Dunsby of Travel Weekly in their article released online yesterday.
If the true nature of the traditional holiday were to ‘take a break’ to unwind and recover from the daily stresses of life, there can be little worse than spending that well deserved time detoxifying your body and mind and spending some much needed TLC on yourself….. An annual MOT if you wish! Eco therapy anyone?
Being outdoors and immersed in a beautiful environment is essential to our mental health and wellbeing and synonymous with the fundamentals of holistic practices. Wellness holidays focus on a wide range of holistic treatments and fitness practices such as Yoga and Pilates , whereby Eco therapy improves mental and physical wellbeing by supporting people to be active outdoors doing gardening, food growing or environmental conservation work and other activities in nature. Both combined is a win-win scenario! (This ties in to our previous blog about eco therapy and eco-tourism in particular).
There seems to be collective appeal towards eco therapy and wellness within a significant group consumers within of the global tourism industry and the global growth of international ‘wellness tourism’ is simply unmistakable. It may be that we are paying more attention to our well being or perhaps an indication that we have so little time to focus on our well being in our day-to-day lives that we are determined to cram some TLC in whilst we get the opportunity to take a break. Whatever it is, it’s working. Just a quick scan through the popular website, “HEALING HOLIDAYS” gives us a valuable insight as to the scale and diversity of the offerings of exclusive resorts all over the world, exclusively marketed to the body and mind conscious British public seeking out eco therapy. Healing Holidays is the UK’s leading independent Spa specialist, and here is a list of their categories:
- Detox
- Anti-ageing Retreats
- Fitness
- Yoga
- Medical Spa
- Pampering Retreats
- Stress Management
- Ayurveda Retreats
- Weight-Loss
- Emotional Healing
- Holistic Healing Retreats
- Fixing your issues
- Group Retreats
- Digital Detox
- Spa for Men
- Health and Fitness Holidays
- Menopause
- Pilates
Their top Five Rejuvenating Retreats are the Vana Personalised Programme (India), SHA Wellness Clinic Rejuvenation Programme (Spain), Ayurveda Resort Sonnhof Fountain of Youth Rejuvenation Week, Bad Ragaz Therapeutic Relaxation Programme (Switzerland) and the Kamalaya Comprehensive Detox & Rejuvenation (Thailand).
When browsing news articles online, there was an amazing article in the Australian “Perth Sunday Times” which states:
“Samantha Lippiatt, from Health and Fitness Travel says “Worldwide, it’s growing by 9 per cent per year, nearly twice as fast as regular tourism.”
According to the Global Wellness Institute industry think-tank, the rapidly emerging sector is expected to be worth $930 billion internationally by 2017. Health and Fitness Travel, which originated in the UK, opened its Australian office in 2014 in response to growing demand. Lippiatt says the business’s Australian clients – three quarters of whom are women aged 35 and up – are looking for a holiday that delivers stress release.
“They’re usually managing emotions and big life changes. We get a lot of interest around big birthdays, during a divorce or if they’ve been retrenched,” she says. “Something big is happening in their lives, and they want to invest in making themselves feel better” According to Lippiatt, feeling better encompasses mental and physical health.
“People want to come back feeling like they’ve had a holiday,” she explains. “With a fly-and-flop trip, everything is done in excess – you drink all the drinks, eat all the food and you’re exhausted when you return. Now people want to create some space for themselves: to sleep, eat well and have a digital detox is a luxury these days. A wellness holiday is an opportunity for people to do that thing they’ve been saying they’re going to do, like getting rid of insomnia, or starting a fitness regime.”
The trend is broadening out, with active family holidays on the rise and healthy honeymoons becoming more popular.”
So, if you’re still considering starting that glamping site, remember, that with it’s emphasis on health, wellbeing (eco therapy) and sustainability you may very well be part of that astonishing growth curve we can see spiralling out in the tourism sector. But don’t just take our word for it, if you do your research you may find an abundance of information which verifies our claims that “Traditional Holidays are OUT and the sustainable, spiritual, uber-trendy eco-holiday is IN” So, ditch the old ideals (and old buildings for that matter) and embrace the roundhouse, an eco therapy haven – we’re behind you every step of the way.
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