Most Hotels Aren’t fit to Offer Wellness, Says Travel Expert Turned Fitness Consultant
Above, Steeman: “Hardly anyone in the hospitality industry embraces the full concept of wellness.”
By Niels Steeman, 10 March 2023
Entertain, and you shall gain.
During my 20-plus years in the Thai inbound travel business, I, like other tour operators and corporate clients, have been fed to the point of satiety by well-meaning hoteliers who want our bookings.
The real business happens at lunch and dinner times. Bottles of fine wines and beers; starters, main courses and desserts, often intertwined with amuse-bouches and more snacks; and aperitifs with coffee/tea round off a well-spent time.
These are not social events on an ad-hoc basis, but back-to-back events often spanning two weeks, three to four times per year. Refusing is often not an option, or is met with a slight resentment. The rounds of inspections, contract negotiations and the catching-up in the evenings with partners over food and drinks raise calories faster than hotels could raise rates.
Too many times, I commented that all this ‘entertainment’ not needed. However, without understanding how the mind works when food is in sight, all too often we dig in.
The mouth-mind-body connection impacted not only my mental but physical health. The issues were visual, among them obesity and brain fog.
Making matters worse, the market became more data-driven and executives like us had to crunch more numbers, resulting in vastly reduced amount of movements. We turned into “desk jockeys,” and the only movement was that of our click of a button on the computer.
The need to take conscious wellness decisions has yet to sink in for many sales and marketing professionals of the travel and hospitality industry. Yet, many are selling wellness as hotels have been quick to jump onto the bandwagon. Just look at the wellness offers that came out post-Covid in this part of the world. Those deals also show that there is a significant amount of greenwashing when the term ‘wellness’ is added to the marketing plan.
Hardly anyone in the hospitality industry embraces the full concept of wellness. International chains hire wellness specialists, set up wellness departments and think that’s all that is needed to incorporate wellness into their operations.
True wellness is a holistic concept that can be practiced anywhere with a sustainable long-term effect. It is a consistent process built on a long-lasting chain of habitual events and practices.
One spa treatment is not wellness. A healthy menu is not wellness. A pillow menu is not wellness. A yoga session at sunset is not wellness. Even if all this together is packaged together, it is not even 10 percent of what wellness is.
Hoteliers should stop using wellness as a means to get more business. It’s akin to stopping the use of plastic water bottles in guestrooms while the kitchen still uses single-use plastic to cover the buffet line. This is greenwashing.
As I started the article with my own experience as a client of too many properties, wellness also includes being aware of how you present your wellness offers to your partners and, even more important, to your own team.
I urge you to offer a holistic and consistent wellness program which does not end when the guest leaves the hotel. A simple example is that using apps, clients can be easily reminded on a daily basis what to do to keep up with their wellness progress.
My suggestion is that hotels should first define what wellness is before using the name. Hire a consultancy that has ample experience in setting up wellness strategies in the hospitality industry.
Today, after switching to a health-is-wealth mentality in 2018, there are only a handful of properties I consider to be offering true wellness. They have two things in common:
Continuously Learning: Even the most well-educated specialists in health and wellness consistently brush up on their knowledge of the latest wellness findings. This helps them stay on top of their game. Success requires a growth mindset. People who have a growth mindset believe that even if they struggle with certain skills, their abilities aren’t set in stone. They think that with work, their skills can improve over time.
Consistency: The rise of modern technology such as apps – be it habit checkers or daily affirmations to keep clients on the right path – can be a powerful tool for hotels to regularly remind clients that the journey they are embarking upon is for years to come.
About Niels Steeman
In 2018, Niels Steeman made a decisive switch in his life to focus more on his health and well-being and, subsequently, founded his own health coaching company. He is general manager of the Fitcorp Group, which specializes in results-driven performance and success programs for individuals, leaders and companies through science-based tools.
Founded on the basis that the fundamentals of health and wellness are a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week process, the Fitcorp Group has designed numerous workshops, training programs and seminars, and has advised numerous Fortune 500 companies and leading hospitality brands on how to effectively raise wellness standards through easy-to-apply techniques.