Global Wellness Summit 10 Wellness Trends for 2024

We’ll see a surge in pilgrimages and a new postpartum wellness, a focus on social and emotional wellness for men and a new climate-adaptive wellness. The longevity megatrend will rage on and weight loss drugs will get a wellness check. Our homes will become highest-tech health hubs, art will be transformed into a multisensory wellness experience, and sports will take their place in hospitality.

The Global Wellness Summit released its annual Future of Wellness report, the longest-running, most in-depth (120-page) forecast of what will make waves in wellness in the year ahead.

In the 20-plus years GWS has been analyzing the wellness space, there have been more shakeups in 2023 than in the last decade. There certainly is momentum: the global market will grow from $5.6 trillion today to $8.5 trillion by 2027 —with countless surveys revealing that wellness has never been such an important priority for people as now.

But what kind of wellness matters—and for whom— is undergoing serious transformation.

Generational, income, and gender gaps are widening in culture, and they’re creating a wellness landscape increasingly defined by very different— even contradictory—markets and mindsets. The GWS calls these polarized wellness markets “hardcare” and “softcare.” “Hardcare” describes the new hyper-medical, high-tech, even more expensive wellness market. “Softcare” captures the new desires for a low-pressure, simpler, less expensive, less relentlessly self-optimizing wellness, where emotional and social wellbeing matter most.

This trends report illustrates how there is no longer one wellness narrative or unifying trend. The future is both “harder” and “softer” care, and that polarity will only widen.

“Hardcare”— from longevity clinics to weight loss drugs, medicine is muscling in: The speed at which medicine is invading the wellness market is astounding. One trend explores how the quest for longevity will continue to dominate the health/wellness space, with highly-medical, highcost longevity clinics becoming the new business genre, offering everything from advanced diagnostics to stem cell treatments. Equally astounding is how fast new weight-loss drugs have upended behavior-change-focused wellness businesses, whether dieting platforms or resorts. Our trend analyzes these drugs’ impact, how wellness businesses quickly pivoted to prescribe Big Pharma’s magic “tricks,” and how the future is the wellness market delivering a healthier, more comprehensive weight-loss approach.

“Softcare”—more low-fi, ancient, social, emotional, deeply human wellness: The media has been covering how younger gens (especially women) are pushing back against this last decade of high-pressure, uber-commodified wellness, and recasting true wellness as a messier, more joyful, simpler and cheaper affair. New desires for a simpler, more profound wellness drive one of our top travel trends of the year: how a record number of revitalized pilgrimage trails worldwide are luring new generations to the most ancient, slow, communal and spiritual form of travel. And if wellness has been complicit in clichéd views of masculinity (only focused on the physical), another trend explores how wellness will finally take a more human approach to men, with a wave of retreats, small groups, and apps focused on men’s social and emotional wellbeing.

Wellness will tackle serious crises, from climate threats to women’s health: With temperatures breaking records each year, one trend explores a