According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness economy in 2017 was $4.2 trillion, growing from $3.7 trillion in 2015—that represents a 6.4 percent annual growth rate, nearly twice the speed of global economic growth in that same time frame. The wellness sectors seeing the biggest boost are the spa industry, wellness tourism, and wellness real estate.
It’s those facts and figures that inspired the launch of a Wellness Pavilion at HD Expo, a trade show dedicated to the hospitality design industry and sister brand to Healthcare Design. It’s also what landed me on that show’s stage in May to moderate a panel on how hospitality is inspiring healthcare design, and vice versa. (For more, see my Editorial in the May 2019 issue.)
The latter may sound like a stretch. Can healthcare really inspire hospitality? On the surface, perhaps not. After all, as panelist Lionel Ohayon, founder of ICrave, remarked, no matter how great the design, at the end of the day, a hospital will still feel like a hospital—and no one actually wants to stay in a hospital.
But as hospitality grapples with the wellness trend and how
to best support the desires of hotel guests with everything from luxury spa
retreats to sustainable bedding and linens, healthcare is on a similar
trajectory. Goals to improve patient satisfaction via design really all boil
down to a desire for built environments to work in concert with care
delivery—all in an effort to make people feel well. So while healthcare and
hospitality may feel like polar opposites at times, in this sense, they have a
lot in common.
So what can healthcare teach hospitality about wellness? For one, as panelist Mary Frazier, managing principal at EwingCole, pointed out, a risk-averse industry like healthcare understands the power of research. We’ve long proven what remains intangible in other industry sectors. We know for a fact that elements such as access to daylight, nature views, private patient rooms, and family accommodations all have profound effects on critical factors like outcomes and length of stay.
In another panel I attended in the Wellness Pavilion, Jaloyn Fockler, executive vice president of Delos, said she sees lighting as holding the most opportunity to innovate wellness in hospitality going forward. Again, I thought of what healthcare, as well as senior living, has accomplished—not just in terms of expansive daylighting but also in understanding the benefits for staff and patients by mimicking circadian cycles through LED technology—an approach that certainly could find its place into hospitality settings.
While we may not see threads of healthcare aesthetics
running though hospitality any time soon, the billions of dollars at stake in
the wellness game may benefit from healthcare design tactics.
