Picture this: you are on a cruise, searching over the sensible blue Mediterranean Sea. Instead of plopping down in a lounge chair with a martini and fries, you head to an infusion station for a stem cell treatment, followed by a fast Botox and a healthy Blue Zone-inspired meal grown on the ship’s solar-powered organic farm.
This is only a small snippet of what happens on a Storylines wellness cruise, all within the name of longevity tourism – a fast-growing sector of the $5.6 trillion wellness industry.
This latest twist on travel “emerged from a strong challenge to the centuries-old model of vacation – excess. Too much food and alcohol and too little sleep in tourist-filled destinations,” said Beth McGroarty, vp of research on the nonprofit Global Wellness Institutetold Assets. “It was a cliché since it was true: people returned feeling worse than once they left.”
Storylines calls itself the “Blue Zone at Sea,” capitalizing on consumers’ desire to travel to change into healthier and live longer—maybe even past 100—quite than mindlessly indulging in pleasure.
“World travelers know that you need a certain level of health and fitness to enjoy traveling the world,” says Storylines CEO Alister Punton. “They want to be able to walk the cobblestone streets of European cities, hike the Inca Trail and snorkel in the Red Sea. So it only makes sense that longevity, well-being and tourism go hand in hand.”
Storylines
Also onboard: a ten,000-square-foot gym with yoga classes, meditation sessions and private trainers, smoothie bars and an Optimal Aging Center with bioidentical hormone alternative therapy, energy and libido-boosting treatments and the aforementioned infusion stations where you’ll be able to get every part from vitamins to chelation treatments that pull heavy metals like lead from the bloodstream. (It’s necessary to notice that a number of the longevity offerings available on voyages, including stem cell treatments and hyperbaric oxygen chambers, are neither extensively tested nor FDA-approved for the common, healthy person.)
Are there no more all-you-can-eat buffets and piña coladas by the pool when traveling?
It’s definitely not for everybody—however it’s actually for some: Between 2020 and 2022, the number of individuals taking wellness trips increased by 30%, and the wellness tourism industry is predicted to achieve $1 trillion by the top of 2024, based on the Global Wellness Institute, which began tracking wellness tourism 15 years ago, just as smartphone usage began to rise. McGroarty believes that is no coincidence.
“People have simply become much more stressed, depressed and unwell, and they are craving travel experiences that will help them heal,” she says.
These trips are actually tied into the rapidly expanding $27 billion longevity market, considered one of the fastest-growing wellness sectors, based on the Global Wellness Institute’s annual report. Itineraries – not only on cruises, but additionally at luxury resorts and vacation homes – promise an oasis where the wellness spa meets the biohacker right on site.
This is the case with the propertya three way partnership between Sam Nazarian, chairman of SBE Entertainment Group, and Tony Robbins, the self-help guru, is billed as “a revolutionary luxury hotel and accommodation ecosystem anchored in the world of preventative medicine, artificial intelligence and longevity” and is ready to open 15 hotels and 10 longevity centers by 2030. In collaboration with the Longevity Center Well LifePreventive medicine clinics and anti-aging spas alongside five-star restaurants and suites shall be the premise, starting at $1,000 per night, based on Bloomberg.
“We are not building medical hotels – we are building luxury hotels, residences and urban clinics that are distinguished by their commitment to changing people’s lives,” says Nazarian in a Press release.
At Six Senses IbizaMeanwhile, guests can benefit from the RoseBar. Not to be confused with a spot to get a late-night dirty martini, it is a longevity club that tests visitors’ biomarkers to offer them with personalized lifestyle, nutrition and exercise advice from a spread of health coaches. There’s also a chilly bath, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, infrared sauna and IV stations.
“You don’t have to commit to a complete retreat. You can simply drop in for a 30-minute red light session, a cryotherapy supplement, or a restorative IV for travel fatigue,” says Talana Bestall, founding member of RoseBar. “It’s about giving you the opportunity to choose exactly what your body needs, when you need it.”
Six Senses Ibiza Rose Bar
The bar is a tribute to holistic measures for well-being and “combines the powers of science and spiritual well-being to improve human health,” guarantees the resort chain, whose chief wellness officer is functional medicine doctor and celebrity longevity enthusiast Dr. Mark Hyman. You also can add a deep dive into Dr. Hyman’s Young Forever program, a six-day detox to reframe aging, reduce stress, and learn to activate your “longevity switch.”
Six Senses Ibiza Rose Bar
Below you will see a collection of other luxurious wellness getaways and their high-end offerings.
The four-course IV
On Four Seasons Resort MauiGuests can take pleasure in a spread of longevity-promoting treatments which are more intense – and invasive – than the massage, fitness or facial treatments typically related to luxury travel.
For $44,000, for instance, you’ll be able to get a four-part ozone, stem cell, exosome and NAD+ therapy in partnership with longevity center Next|Health. And for the cut price price of $299, you’ll be able to get a “hangover IV,” a 30-minute detox treatment, or a “gut health IV” to cut back inflammation.
200 biomarkers of knowledge
The OG Wellness Resort and Spa Canyon Ranch recently launched Lifespan8a four-day, $20,000 retreat in Tucson, Arizona, where stays begin with a blood draw and a private doctor consultation, followed by sleep screenings and endurance tests.
The hope is that guests leave rejuvenated – with over 200 biomarkers assessed – and a plan of motion.
“The medical establishment still doesn’t place an emphasis on prevention, so affluent people are looking for new medical wellness goals or programs to get their health under control before it becomes a problem,” says McGroarty.
And now we introduce: the School for Longevity
Others, especially investors and enterprise capitalists, prefer to complement their trips with details about longevity. And for $70,000, longevity entrepreneur Peter Diamandis offers a five-day “Platinum Longevity Journey,” where people learn the fundamentals of optimizing sleep, nutrition and exercise, together with latest treatments and biohacks from researchers. He calls it his “five-day, five-star deep dive into longevity.”
While Diamandis has been running retreats for enterprise capitalists and entrepreneurs for over a decade, the longevity-focused program, now in its sixth 12 months, only recently got going, he says. “They’re there because they want to solve a health problem that someone in their family has,” he says Assets“We design a personalized trip for everyone. That means we interview all members in advance and find out what they are looking for. The demand and interest in this has increased enormously.”
Abundance Platinum
Diamandis suggests the rise in longevity tourism is as a result of rapid innovation in what he calls the “healthspan renaissance,” where research has highlighted the facility of people to enhance their health. As a result, wealthy entrepreneurs are desperate to be on the forefront of using data to enhance lifestyle and health.
And as aging sick is not any longer seen as inevitable – a minimum of for the privileged – increasingly more persons are seeing vacation as the right opportunity to enhance their lifestyle. Whether it is a pre-dinner IV or Botox on the ship, persons are redefining the meaning of travel and it’s becoming increasingly exclusive.
“I call this new, super-medical, high-tech, even more expensive wellness market a new ‘hardcare’ wellness,” says McGroarty. “Medical longevity programming is popping up in unexpected places.”