Luxury used to mean room service and overnight shoe-shine service. Now, it’s an infrared sauna and a cold plunge.
The past few years have seen a rise in something beyond indulgence in hospitality: wellness. From AI-enhanced mattresses and performance skincare to vitamin-C showers and deprivation tanks, guests today don’t just want to rest; they want to reset. The smart hotels are meeting the moment.
At the Santa Monica Proper, wellness goes beyond the spa. The hotel offers a private Recovery Suite with cold plunges at varying temperatures, full-body red light therapy, compression boots and a dry sauna. Add-ons include an infrared sauna and the Ammortal Chamber, a pod that combines infrared light, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and oxygen therapy. It’s less pampering, more performance.
It’s not just about add-on amenities designed to support wellness. Many consumers are making travel decisions based on the ability to restore body and mind, where wellness has become the purpose of the trip. For this new generation of travelers, the hotel is the experience.
The Ranch Hudson Valley in New York strips wellness down to its essentials—daily hikes, breathwork and high-end recovery treatments—in a minimalist estate designed to reset from the inside out. It’s the East Coast sibling of The Ranch Malibu, a secluded California retreat known for its weeklong guided programs that focus on movement, mindful nutrition, nature immersion and total restoration of body and mind. With group sizes kept intentionally small, both destinations are built to deliver deep, lasting impact on guests’ health, energy and sense of purpose.
Healthy Moves
At the same time, wellness-first companies are expanding into hospitality as a natural extension. These aren’t traditional hotel brands retrofitting spas into their buildings—they’re lifestyle leaders building entire guest experiences around health optimization.
Equinox Hotels, a spinoff of the world-renowned luxury fitness company famous for its swanky gyms and spas, has embraced one of the most interesting trends in high-tech hospitality: sleep tourism. Their rooms are engineered for recovery, with blackout shades, superior soundproofing and custom mattresses designed for optimal alignment and cooling. Guests can wind down with guided rituals through in-room tech or hit the spa for cryotherapy and relaxation treatments aimed at supporting deep, restorative sleep. This isn’t just rest—it’s performance recovery, packaged as luxury.
Legacy hospitality brands have also taken notice—and are incorporating these avant-garde features into their flagship properties. They understand that today’s discerning guests expect more than traditional luxury—they expect innovation.
Park Hyatt New York introduced Bryte Sleep Suites featuring restorative AI-enabled beds designed to enhance sleep quality. These smart mattresses adjust temperature and pressure in real time, promote spinal alignment and use immersive relaxation experiences that sync gentle motion with calming audio—all with the goal of optimizing deep, restorative rest.
Going Viral
Why are hotels pouring this much energy (and square footage) into wellness? Guests used to post pictures of their room-service tray and poolside mimosas. Now they post their cold plunge times.
Wellness has become the new badge of luxury. Where we once flexed decadence, now we flex our vitality.
The Global Wellness Institute reports that wellness tourism reached $651 billion in 2022 and is projected to exceed $1.4 trillion by 2027. Travelers today are more health-conscious, more recovery-aware and more selective about how a hotel stay makes them feel.
Luxury is still about being waited on; it’s also about walking out better than you walked in.
The best hospitality brands are adapting their entire model around this idea. Wellness isn’t just an amenity anymore—it’s part of the foundation. Whether it’s the sleep-enhancing scent in the room, the skincare products designed to heal and elevate the skin or the in-room sauna that makes the spa obsolete, wellness is embedded into the guest journey.
If your guests are paying top dollar for a high-end experience, they’re not just asking: “What can I enjoy tonight?” They’re asking: “How will I feel tomorrow?” Does your hotel have an answer?
Story contributed by Jacob Rosenberg, founder & CEO of Krete, a line of skin and hair products.
