Hospitals and hospitality have been converging for decades, slowly at first with hotspots in the Alps and Dolomites, now with huge acceleration post-COVID. From red light therapy (RLT) and ice plunges to fitness programs and nutrition-focused food and beverage offerings, wellness is becoming a powerful differentiator across all hotel segments, with major global chains like Accor making it a core part of their brand essence.
Some may think wellness isn’t relevant to their property, but it’s now a key driver of demand, bestowing hotels with the ability to extend length of stay and drive total RevPAR. More than just spa treatments and yoga, though, wellness now encompasses a range of technologies under the banner of "welltech," all designed to enhance guest experiences while also being labor-efficient and giving existing spaces more throughout per square foot.
For IT directors, chief financial officers and chief information officers/chief technology officers, wellness is no longer just a spa matter. As labor constraints persist, spas will increasingly rely on seamless technology integrations for merchandising, payments, scheduling and inventory. Additionally, wellness can be woven into the entire guest journey — enhancing meetings, in-room stays and social gatherings — all requiring tech-driven execution to do so at scale.
Building on this, wellness is no longer about isolated treatments and one-off purchases. Instead, there’s another subcategory of hotels in the upper-luxury scale that are designing a holistic, multimodal approaches to wellness where multiple therapies work together for a greater overall impact.
A great example is skin health and skincare productization. Traditionally, hotel guests might visit a spa for a facial or massage to give people a visual skin health boost. But combining these with photobiomodulation — PBM, with the most common modality within this being RLT — enhances collagen production, while infrared saunas and cold plunges contribute have been shown to contribute to cellular repair and detoxification. Add pulsed electromagnetic frequency (PEMF) therapy, vibroacoustics or supplements, and the result is a high-value, results-driven guest experience.
This concept applies to all desired wellness goals that a person going to a hotel would want such as better sleep, improved cognition, stress relief or longevity-focused antiaging. By layering physics, chemistry, biology, kinesiology and psychology into clustered treatments, hotels can offer comprehensive programs that drive deeper guest engagement and premium revenue streams.
The integration of traditional wellness with cutting-edge welltech is already happening, particularly in luxury hotels. As demand rises, this trend will inevitably expand into upscale and midscale segments.
To give you some leading examples for opt-op-ed research that run the gamut of what’s possible and the schools of thought around multimodal wellness experiences, we have:
- Canyon Ranch.
- Carillion Miami Wellness Resort.
- Chenot Palace.
- Clinique La Prairie.
- Equinox Hotel New York.
- Fairmont Century Plaza.
- Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea.
- Lanserhof.
- Lily of the Valley.
- SHA Wellness Clinic.
- SIRO.
- Six Senses Ibiza.
- The Ranch.
Preventative health and longevity are becoming core lifestyle priorities across generations, and hotels are responding by integrating multimodal wellness experiences. However, offering curated wellness itineraries requires sophisticated automation. Currently, bundling wellness services into packages relies heavily on manual scheduling and interpretation by individual practitioners – that’s a big problem for scale.
Hence, and again, IT professionals will play a critical role in streamlining these processes. AI-driven intake forms and automated scheduling platforms will be essential to personalizing guest itineraries while managing operational efficiency. Additionally, the vast amount of wellness data generated from guest visits presents opportunities for hyper-personalized recommendations, repeat business and predictive marketing strategies. That’s all for the future and something that will need to be ironed out as hotels work to untangle their tech stacks and set up ML-enabled data lakes.
Ultimately, wellness is no longer a siloed, niche add-on for hotel brands; it should be treated as a strategic investment for hotels looking to differentiate themselves and capture growing consumer demand. Watching how wellness and technology continue to intersect will be crucial in shaping the next generation of guest experiences. Thinking multimodal and using welltech to approach wellness without proportionate increases to labor are two important steps to consider.
Adam and Larry Mogelonsky are partners of Hotel Mogel Consulting Ltd., a Toronto-based consulting practice. Larry focuses on asset management, sales and operations while Adam specializes in hotel technology and marketing.
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