Wellness Trends of 2016 Revealed

The world’s largest media, marketing and gifting company for the wellness industry, with nearly 30 years of experience as a spa and wellness authority, Spafinder Wellness 365 announces the wellness trends you need to know about in 2016.

Surf’s Up! The New Wave of Wellness
It’s hardly breaking news that surf culture has been established as the apex of cool. The worship of surfing “style” took off in the ‘60s when the Beach Boys harmonized about a world where “everybody’d be surfin’ like Californ-i-a, and Bruce Brown’s documentary The Endless Summer brought images of boy-tribes on their globe-trotting quest for perfect waves to the world. But surfing has boomed: growing from small, wave-obsessed clans from Hawaii, California and Australia, to the more than 35 million global surfers catching waves today.

Sexual Wellbeing: Taboo No More
Ours is a world where every kind of “wellness” imaginable is explored and promoted, whether physical, mental, spiritual, environmental or workplace. But meaningful conversations about, and approaches to improve, sexual wellbeing have been seriously left out of the equation. In this sexually schizo culture, there has been little attention paid to helping people respect, explore and define their own sexual wellbeing (with or without a partner); little sexual literacy on how real bodies and sexual “parts” work (across a person’s lifespan); and very few places where people can go to heal sexual issues or proactively embrace and improve their own sexual health and happiness.

Temazcal [temas’kal]
Many return home from luxury spa treatments describing themselves as revitalized or reinvigorated, but for those who experience the ancient Mexican practice of Temazcal another word often comes to mind: reborn. Dating back to Mayan and Aztec cultures, Temazcal roughly translates to “house of steam,” yet these simple adobe huts are far more than just primitive saunas. Temazcal is as much a ritual as it is a treatment, with a trained healer (or “Temazcalera”) guiding guests through a process that seeks to cleanse their bodies, minds and spirits.

Parenting Well: Serious Spa & Wellness for Kids
Students practice Transcendental Meditation as part of the David Lynch Foundation’s Quiet Time program. Parents are learning that to raise healthy children in the 21st century means more than just teaching them to eat their vegetables or look both ways before crossing the street. Tuned-in parents, armed with more options and resources than ever before, are looking to the same spa and wellness therapies and techniques they’ve relied upon to improve their own lives to now nurture their children’s.

The Adrenaline & Zen Cocktail: Resetting the Mind & Body
When wellness travel’s evolution is discussed, it’s often represented as a series of consecutive “waves,“ with the first wave all about Zen-like spa pampering, stress reduction and yoga, and the ascendant wave about out-in-nature and high adventure experiences. But it’s not a case of the more extreme adventure trend replacing the Zen trend: more high-adrenaline “rush” experiences—from canyoning, to cliff camping, to circus schools—are now being paired with deep relaxation.

Well-Fests: Festivals Shift from Wasted to Wellness
From Bonnaroo to Burning Man, Carnival to Coachella, the thriving festival circuit promises to fill any enthusiast’s calendar, with the only limiting factor being lack of funds or perhaps lack of sleep. Last year 32 million people attended a music festival in the U.S. alone – that’s more than the population of Texas1. But as the industry expands, a growing number of festivals are celebrating wellness in addition to, or even in lieu of, music, art, and debauchery.

On-Demand: Uber-izing Spa & Wellness
With a smartphone in every pocket and more apps than stars in the sky, the world isn’t just at your fingertips—it’s racing toward your front door. GrubHub wants to bring your dinner, Instacart your groceries, Drizly your booze, and Postmates is happy to fetch you everything in between. Long gone are the days when only Chinese food delivered. The beauty and wellness industries are not about to be left behind, and app-driven on-demand options are cropping up left and right, offering people access to healthy options wherever, whenever, and however they want.

Skin Care Gets Seoul-ful: The Korean Beauty Explosion 2.0
Korean Beauty was a hot trend in 2015 but it’s far more than a fad, and in the coming year you’ll hear more buzz on these premium, affordable skin-care products—and also more attention paid to the Korean approach to skin care: a multi-step hydrating regimen that rejects today’s need for speed in favor of a deliberate and healthy ritual in one’s busy day. In 2016, also expect to see more skin care and cosmetic products marketed to men outside of Korea.

Healthy Cruising:The Ship of Excess Has Set Sail
Expect a tsunami of innovation that will eventually render the “booze and buffet” cruises of today into the “juice and transform” cruises of tomorrow. Just as traditional spas on land became much more than mere pamper-palaces, so, too, did the emphasis at sea change. Consumer demand for healthier travel is now steering the way for a different, complete wellness-focused approach. Wellness businesses are “boarding ship,” expanding at sea to allow travelers to de-stress and keep healthy while they set sail and even once they dock—and the competition is keen.

Workplace Wellness Grows Up
Creating a healthier work environment is far from a novel concept, its roots in Western corporate culture reaching back as far as Boeing’s pacesetting non-smoking-workplace policies of the 1980s, and the early-1970s craze for executive gyms and mandated annual physical fitness tests for upper management employees. But workplace wellness is finally growing up, and it is beginning to look more fresh, inviting and—from the point of view of all concerned—worthwhile. This is why workplace wellness is such an important trend to watch. In this new phase, we are moving into a ‘culture of wellness’ and, at more advanced companies, a ‘culture of purpose’.