Wellness stopped being a spa menu and became an economy

WellnessAugust 2026Insight 02

The global wellness economy reached US$6.8 trillion in 2024 and is forecast to hit US$9.8 trillion by 2029, growing faster than global GDP.

The Global Wellness Institute's 2025 Monitor puts the wellness economy at US$6.8 trillion in 2024, double its 2013 size, and projects 7.6% annual growth to nearly US$9.8 trillion by 2029. For comparison, the IMF's forecast for global GDP growth over the same period is 4.5%. Wellness is outgrowing the economy it sits inside.

North America, Asia Pacific and Europe together account for close to 90% of that market, with Asia Pacific at roughly US$2.0 trillion. The tourism-linked sectors are where the movement is sharpest: wellness tourism grew 13.8% between 2023 and 2024, spas 14.6%, and thermal and mineral springs 11.1%, three of the four largest year on year gainers.

Southeast Asia has a structural advantage here that has nothing to do with marketing. The region's wellness traditions are indigenous rather than imported, the treatment cost base is a fraction of European equivalents, and the supply of trained therapists is deeper. A Balinese, Thai or Javanese practice sold at a Singapore price point is a margin structure that a Swiss operator cannot replicate.

That advantage is also the trap. Per capita wellness spending in Asia Pacific is around US$471, against far higher figures in North America. Volume is not the same as value. The operators who do well in this decade are the ones who can price a treatment against a cost base rather than against the spa down the road, and who understand that a wellness concept is a capacity problem before it is an experience problem.

Design consultancies in the region now describe wellness as a full ecosystem: integrated stays, evidence-based programming, longevity and mental wellness. That shift makes wellness a business model in its own right, and costing a concept like that is exactly the work the programme assesses.