Biotech and social experience to shape future of wellness, says GWS report
Wellness is set to tackle the loneliness epidemic and there will be a move towards science-backed biotech beauty, according to a new GWS report
The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) has released its annual “Future of Wellness" trend report - A long-running global forecast of the newest directions in wellness.
According to the report, in 2023 wellness will tackle loneliness by way of socially driven spaces and concepts and wellness travel will become ‘hyper-indigenous.’
The report also highlights a move away from “clean beauty” to science-backed biotech beauty and from shallow workplace wellness promises to more meaningful measures.
Also, after years of lockdown restrictions making wellness a very solitary at-home experience, there will be an increased thirst for more immersive and sensory experiences.
“Cast your mind back to 2019, the highwater mark of the hyper-consumerist, product-flooded wellness market–with so many evidence-challenged trends a minute,” said Susie Ellis, GWS chair and chief executive.
“This year’s report is proof that the wellness market of just three years ago suddenly feels archaic. Wellness in 2023 (and beyond) will be more serious and science-backed, but also more social and sensory.”
GWS emerging themes
Changing consumer values
As the Covid-19 pandemic reaches endemicity, GWS states that the trends observed in the report suggest a shift from ‘self-obsessed’ wellness and ‘self-care’ to community-based wellness models aiming to tackle the loneliness epidemic with more focus on social wellness with a surge in new spaces, community models and concepts with human connection at the heart.
Additionally, tackling the critique of wellness often being culturally appropriative another theme suggests wellness travel will shift from “global smorgasbord” to Indigenous wellness at the source. Meanwhile, “workplace wellness will finally start to mean something” as employees call for employers to make meaningful plans of action in regard to mental health.
Biotech beauty
The report states that we will see a move away from the muddy claims of ‘clean beauty to lab-tested, science-backed “biotech beauty.”
When it comes to diets doctors are exploring how transforming white fat into brown may be the obesity breakthrough we have been waiting for.
A return to wellness roots
The GWS report indicates that wellness will be returning to its roots but with some important differences. The already sensory industry is set to become a multisensory affair with the integration of light, scent, temperature, touch and sound. “After three years of touchless wellness, people hunger for sensory immersion,” says GWS.
An unprecedented global surge in new-look hot springs destinations and wild and cross-country swimming will take wellness back to the water - the foundation of any spa experience.
Wellness impacts new sectors
The report shows how wellness will transform multiple people-impacting sectors, including how a wellness lens is powerfully changing urban design and infrastructure; the opportunities hospitality brands see in embracing pro-level sports; and how wellness is becoming a much bigger focus of government policy.
The GWS “Future of Wellness report emerges from the insights of hundreds of global executives from wellness companies, economists, doctors, investors, academics and technologists that gather each year at the Summit. This year, in addition to having leading journalists and analysts as authors, the trend-spotters include top experts in that field—whether doctors, economists, or urban futurists.