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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. This new mindset, pioneering in its time, was well […]

Cruise ship spas came on board in the early ’80s with operators like Cunard that brought the iconic Golden Door spa in Escondido, California, aboard its flagship, the QE2, to provide fitness, spa services, and programming, and the innovative company Steiner Leisure Limited heading up hair and beauty services. It was an experiment at first—evidenced […]

Two life-size cardboard cutouts of fresh-faced and stylishly coiffed South Korean boy band stars welcome guests at the entrance of Nature Republic’s downtown Los Angeles store. But Nature Republic is not a music shop, or even a clothing brand. It’s a major South Korean skin care and cosmetics line, one of many that is grabbing […]

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver. Mahatma Gandhi Back in 2007 Spafinder named “spa real estate” a top trend, after tracking the rise of a new breed of residence that essentially let people live at a luxury spa. The concept was pioneered by high-profile destination spas, like Canyon Ranch Living, which launched […]

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. On the one hand we live in a sex-saturated world: bombarded with hyper-sexualized images and impossible […]

“Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learning how, come on a safari with me.” – The Beach Boys, 1962 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’ […]

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 […]

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. The poor diets, technological obsessions, and ubiquitous stressors that plague adult life offer no immunity to the young. Playtime is being threatened by busy schedules; […]

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 […]

Spafinder has been affiliated with the Spa Industry and Wellness for decades. The annual Global Spa and Wellness Trends Report is a valuable resource for both industry professionals and Spa and Wellness devotees. What follows is a section by section recap of the 2016 report. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learning how, come on a […]