MIAMI—The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) released its annual “Future of Wellness” report, the longest-running, most in-depth (160 pages) and only truly global forecast of the newest directions in wellness. The 12 wellness trends for 2023 were unveiled at a media event in New York City. A few themes emerge:
Radically different consumer values. The trends show a profound shift in consumer values coming out of the pandemic: from a rejection of a “self-obsessed” wellness to a demand for science and solutions that work. If in this last decade-plus, wellness led with two lonely models—a sea of “self-care” products and “digital wellness”— the trend “Wellness Comes for the Loneliness Epidemic” details the many ways that the wellness world (and wider world) is finally tackling the biggest missing cornerstone in health: social wellness, with a surge in new spaces, community models and concepts that put human connection at the very center. With a critique of wellness as a relentless cultural appropriator, one trend details how wellness travel will shift from “global smorgasbord” to Indigenous wellness at the source. In “Workplace Wellness Finally Starts to Mean Something,” we see how fed-up employees, worsening mental health, and remote work mean “workplace wellness” is finally moving from false promise to meaningful plan of action.
Science is King. “From ‘Clean’ to Biotech Beauty” reveals how we’re moving beyond clean beauty’s often muddy claims to lab-tested, scientist-created “biotech beauty.” With so much misinformation about diets and metabolic health, one trend—written by a doctor—explores how transforming white fat into brown may be the obesity breakthrough.
A Return to Wellness Roots—With a Difference. Various trends illustrate how we’re returning to some of the deepest roots of wellness, but with a radical reimagining. If wellness has always been a sensory affair, new directions in multisensory integration are emerging with light, scent, temperature, touch, and sound being blended to create a dramatically new era for “sensory wellness.” If water is the foundation of spa, the “Blue, Hot and Wild” trend predicts that we’ll now be “taking the waters” in deepest nature, with an unprecedented global surge in new-look hot springs destinations—and wild and cross-country swimming going global. After three years of “touchless wellness” people hunger for sensory immersion.
Wellness Impacts Serious New Sectors. Wellness has rewritten industries from fashion to real estate, and the report shows how it will now transform a couple of very serious, 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.
“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 CEO. “This 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.”
The 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.
The “Future of Wellness 2023” can be purchased here. The 2023 Global Wellness Trends are supported by Biologique Recherche and Art of Cryo.
