If we’ve learned anything during the pandemic, it’s that wellbeing is important. In the absence of the hustle and bustle of ordinary work, many of us have been able to reconnect with what drives us and how we can meet our own wellbeing needs.
As we emerge from lockdowns and travel restrictions, people are eager to travel more and to increase all facets of their wellbeing.
Perhaps because of this, the wellbeing sector is predicting a much stronger than anticipated recovery and is likely to grow by around 6% in 2021 and by 4.4% in 2022, according to the Global Wellness Institute. According to the Global Wellbeing Report by Lululemon, there is an increased focus on the three pillars of wellbeing, physical, mental and social, especially the first one.
There are five key ways you can make wellbeing paramount: know your audience, know the top trends, pay careful attention to the guest journey, expand your offering and make wellbeing an organisation-wide focus.
Know your guests
Gathering and analysing data on your guests is essential for various reasons. This can…
While it’s vital to understand your guests inside out, part of this involves knowing — and respecting — their privacy concerns and data preferences. With a growing interest in sanitisation policies and a demand for private work-out spaces, it’s worth considering individual spaces and in-room fitness solutions.
Be across the top trends
Fitness needs changed radically during the pandemic. For example, the ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) lists online training, wearable technology, bodyweight training, outdoor activities and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as the top five fitness trends of 2021.
We also know from Strava research that, for obvious reasons, the popularity of walking increased in 2020 so hotel guests might be as interested in information about local walking routes as they are in information about on-site facilities.
In order to speak to the travellers’ needs, keeping abreast of these latest changes is crucial.
The guest journey
Thanks to the pandemic, the customer journey has become even more important in all aspects of life. As consumers, we’re more demanding and we’re less tolerant of obstructions. How can you make sure your guests have a seamless experience that will ensure they come back for more? Are there obstacles you can remove or extras you can include?
Expand your guest offering
A hotel gym can make or break a guest experience or determine a guest’s booking. Before deciding on a route for your investment, you should thus ask yourself a couple of questions:
If you don’t have a dedicated room for a gym on your property, converting two rooms into a small gym is a cost-effective way to boost your offer.
In order to provide an optimum wellbeing experience, these points must be embedded across the entire organisation and implemented as part of a hotel-wide policy.