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A newly released report from the Global Wellness Institute says that the global wellness economy will grow by 9.9% annually and reach US$7 trillion by 2025.

Presented at the recent Global Wellness Summit, the Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond Covid report provides new market data on the overall wellness economy and for each of its 11 sectors, as well as exploring how COVID-19 impacted the industry, which markets fared best and worst and what the future holds for the sector.

Introducing their work, GWI Senior Research Fellows and report co-authors, Ophelia Yeung and Katherine Johnston, advised “we estimate that the global wellness economy grew from US$4.3 trillion in 2017 to US$4.9 trillion in 2019.”

However, in 2020 this figure dropped by 11% in 2020 to US$4.4 trillion due to the significant economic impacts from the pandemic but the GWI is predicting a healthy recovery over the next four years.

The GWI's 2020 values for the 11 sectors are as follows - in order of size - with physical activity at US$738 billion, spa at US$68 billion and wellness real estate at US$275 billion:

• Personal Care and Beauty - US$955 billion
• Healthy Eating, Nutrition and Weight Loss - US$946 billion
• Physical Activity - US$738 billion
• Wellness Tourism - US$436 billion
• Traditional and complementary medicine - US$413 billion
• Public Health, Prevention and Personalised Medicine - US$375 billion
• Wellness Real Estate - US$275 billion
• Mental Wellness - US$131 billion
• Spas - US$68 billion
• Workplace Wellness - US$49 billion
• Thermal / Mineral Springs - US$39 billion

Yeung noted “this research update is crucial, because 2020 is the watershed year that will forever divide history - and the trajectory of the wellness economy - into ‘before’ and ‘after’ COVID-19.

“When we analyse how different wellness markets performed in the last year, it’s natural to want to compare them and label winners and losers. But there is no question that wellness - as a concept, as a lifestyle priority, and consumer value - is a big winner from the pandemic.”

Yeung and Johnson worked alongside GWI research fellow Tonia Callender to produce the report.

Growth in the GWI’s 11 sectors
As part of the investigation, researchers highlight how each sector’s value was affected during 2019-2020, in light of the pandemic.
Wellness Real Estate exhibited the highest growth rate (22%), followed by Mental Wellness (7.2%), Public Health, Prevention and Personalised Medicine (4.5%) and Healthy Eating, Nutrition and Weight Loss (3.6%).

The sectors which shrank the most include Wellness Tourism (-39.5%), spas (-38.6%) and thermal/mineral springs (-38.9%).

Elsewhere, Personal Care and Beauty (-13%) and Physical Activity (-13%) recorded a slight loss. However, fitness technology as a sub-sector exhibited significant growth of 29.1%, as many consumers swapped their spend on in-person training for digital workout solutions.

Future sector growth
Looking ahead, the report predicts that Wellness Tourism (20.9%), Thermal/Mineral Springs (18.1%), Spas (17.2%) and Wellness Real Estate (16.1%) will be the top four fastest-growing sectors between 2020-2025.

Here the authors note “the growth rates for these sectors may seem abnormally high, but it’s because they reflect a period of rapid post-pandemic recovery in 2021 and 2022, and then taper off to a growth trajectory similar to their pre-pandemic levels.

Other sectors that maintained positive growth during the 2020 pandemic, including Wellness Real Estate and Mental Wellness, are projected to continue their robust growth trends in the coming years.

Global profile of wellness
This year was the first year the GWI included regional breakdowns in the report, which indicated that Asia-Pacific was the largest region for wellness spending in 2020 at US$1.5 trillion.

North America (US$1.3 trillion) and Europe (US$1.1 trillion) follow closely behind.

Together, these three regions account for 90% of the entire global wellness economy.

Using this newly expanded dataset on the wellness economy by region and by country, the GWI will launch a new report in January 2022 that compares, ranks and analyses the wellness markets in countries around the world.

GWI has also revealed that the 2022 Global Wellness Summit will be held in Tel Aviv, Israel from 30th October to 2nd November next year.

Click here to read the full version of the Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond Covid report.

Image courtesy of Belgravia Leisure.

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