Wellness tourism refers to travel undertaken with the goal of increasing health and well-being via physical, psychological, and spiritual activities while on vacation. Wellness tourism is often associated with medical tourism, owing to the fact that the tourist is motivated by a desire to improve their health. The difference between wellness tourists and medical tourists is that wellness tourists are proactive in their pursuit of bettering or maintaining health and quality of life, often focusing on prevention, whereas medical tourists are generally reactive in their pursuit of treatment for a diagnosed disease or condition. This growth will be fueled by expansion in Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and emerging nations.
Sri Lanka’s wellness tourism business is still in its early stages of growth, with a strong emphasis on traditional medicine as its core focus. Additionally, there is a distinct area devoted to conventional Western medicine. Professionals in the sector are aware that the expansion of the industry must be accompanied by progressive rules that are commensurate with it. Unregulated, rapid expansion may result in low-investment operators who may harm the industry’s reputation by creating a bad image.
In the wellness tourism business, there are two types of visitors: primary wellness tourists and secondary wellness tourists. Primary wellness tourists travel only for the goal of wellbeing, while secondary wellness tourists travel with the intention of participating in wellness-related activities as part of their vacation. A considerable portion of the overall number of wellness tourism journeys and expenditures is made up of secondary wellness tourists. Of these tourists, Europeans and Asian women are acknowledged as the leading and fastest-growing sources of visitors to the United States. For this reason, we’ll go over the segments of female European wellness tourists, as well as their behavior and reasons.
Wellness as a rebranded form of niche tourism did not emerge until the new millennium, with global awareness being raised through the internet and social media in particular, with a focus on both the body and the mind as a means of attaining wellness through travel experiences becoming increasingly popular. It is difficult to quantify the ideas of well-being and work satisfaction in concrete terms since individuals might get varying degrees of pleasure from the same experience.
Increasingly, wellness tourism encompasses a variety of activities and experiences such as beauty treatment, massage, relaxation or energy-balancing programs, art, music, and the love of nature. Many of these activities are best described as well-being tourism. Moreover, not only is it losing its direct association with health (i.e. with non-illness), but its relationship with happiness is also becoming increasingly tied to personal experiences and fulfillment rather than to more visible, externally imposed health objectives such as weight reduction.
Wellness tourism is currently a highly sought-after aspect of the tourist industry. Consumers are becoming more aware of the need of including health-related factors in their travel plans and exploring conventional wellness approaches. Sri Lanka’s geographic location and current tourist culture, together with the country’s natural resources and cultural assets, place it in a perfect position to profit from these developments. Sri Lanka’s aims to develop a sustainable wellness tourism value chain that is strongly entrenched in local communities and traditions would be greatly aided by the country’s natural and cultural riches.