The health and wellness service sectors have been expanding for a while, and the coronavirus has hastened that growth, due to the challenges it has created for virtually everyone in the world. By throwing people’s mental health struggles in high relief, COVID-19 has prompted more people to seek out services that can help them deal with those challenges. For hospitality brands, the answer is clear: Make mental health and wellness services readily available to anyone staying with them.

Many hotels already have spa facilities on site, offering massages or pedicures to weary travellers or vacationers who want a little pampering. By expanding the assortment of services they offer, they also seek to appeal to people who are finally getting to travel a little, often for the first time in years, but who are continuing to confront the stresses of the pandemic.

For example, at Miraval Resort and Spa locations, a video series of soothing soundscapes and visual images, developed in collaboration with mental health professionals, helps patrons relax and achieve a meditative state. Different hotels in the Four Seasons chain provide sound healing as a restorative therapy, or else hypnosis sessions. An independent spa in Nashville combines sound healing, chakra balancing, and massages with herbal poultices in what it calls the Kundalini treatment. Rather than virtual depictions or sounds, the Carmel Valley Ranch relies on the horses it maintains on its property to provide visitors a form of therapy, in which they interact comfortably with the animals.

Before introducing a package it calls Wellbeing Sanctuaries to potential guests, the Banyan Tree resorts in Singapore provided the elements to its staffers, whom it recognized as being stressed and fearful due to the pandemic as well. The package offer includes a 64-point wellness assessment, followed by meditative practice to manage stress and gain what it refers to as emotional resilience.

The range of options suggests that people can find the treatment that will work best for them. Such pursuits are important in our current era: Whereas only 11 percent of people surveyed by the Census Bureau diagnosed themselves as depressed or anxious in 2019, that number rose to 42 percent by the end of 2020. A depressed and anxious society cannot thrive. But by helping people deal with their anxieties and stresses, hotels providing wellness service might thrive themselves.

Discussion Questions:

1. Are hotels appropriate providers for mental health and well-being services? What risks are involved in this service provision?
2. What other wellness practices might hospitality industry service providers add to their offerings?

Source: Debra Kamin, “For Those Stressed Out by COVID-19, Hotel Spas Say They Have the Answer,” The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2021