What is the difference between medical, wellness, & wellbeing tourism?
The coronavirus pandemic has raised interest in the expanding health and wellness economy. Meanwhile the concept of wellness and medical tourism are converging.
Wellbeing starts with preventative healthcare, a balanced lifestyle that promotes health and prevents disease. Essential practices include diet, exercise, relaxation, environment, consciousness, meditation, rejuvenation, and spiritual growth.
Wellness Tourism — a Patchworks of Insight & Practices From Various Systems
In context of Wellness, typically these practices are often a patchwork, presented as a “buffet” at a wellness resort or destination spa as discrete topics found on a menu. The participant can either graze on their own, or with the guidance of the Spa Director. For decades many have found relief, temporarily becoming “unplugged” in bliss and oasis. The yogi or gym trainer offers exercise, the therapist offers spa treatments, all charging according to set time frames. The underlying aim is to maximize efficiency both in facility occupancy and practitioner labor cost. The overt aim is to provide plenty of options to quench the participant’s thirst — with temporary results as both a reactive and proactive approach.
Recently this practice has expanded to include the Retreat format. Resident or visiting teachers/coaches engage a 3-6 day time frame with a syllabus and group-therapy dynamic. Fig #1 at right, charts a summary of differentiators. Fig #2 graph, bottom, reflects destination examples within ranges of reactive and proactiveness, and standard and authentic experience.
Like permaculture Wellbeing it is based on interconnectivity
Medical Tourism — Complaint-Based Travelers Responding Reactively to Undergo Treatments Abroad.
Fig #1 chart below depicts Medical Tourism as complaint-based. Activities are reactive to illnesses, medically necessary, invasive, and/or overseen by a medical doctor.
Wellness Tourism, in its various forms depicted in Fig #2, bottom, possess varying degrees of reactive and proactive responses, encompassing retreats, spa, and holistic programming.
Wellness and Medical tourism are both generally short-stay in duration with quick-fix expectations (with debatable results). The two realms are starting to merge with diagnostic and results-driven treatments offered at some wellness destinations while medical tourism experiences are broadening their offering to include life-style and wellness services. Horwath HTL has recently termed the result as “integrated health center”.
When the wellness community speaks about its approach in holistic terms, it typically includes notions of the whole body — mind, body, and spirit — utilizing complementary (traditional) modalities. However, the context is typically a patchwork of various systems.
Attaining wellbeing utilizing the lessons of a particular cultural's authenticity allows its cultural systems and indigenous knowledge to also become engaged and instructive — the outcome is more longterm with a preventative consequence.
Wellbeing — an Integrated system rooted in one well-formulated philosophy perspective
Achieving long-lasting wellbeing is via an integrated system rooted in one well-formulated philosophical perspective, preventative in purpose. The practices are designed to be complementary, and the logic for various practices within the system is based on a specific philosophy of life and health that extols the importance of balance for creating a healthy, productive, and meaningful life. Rather than a patchwork of practices, like permaculture it is based on interconnectivity.
Wellbeing Tourism is a term coined by the Harmony Project as an integration of Allopathic and Naturopathic Medicine embracing the described approach, with its general attributes charted in Fig #1 at right. It rises above medical and wellness travel destination examples depicted in the Fig #2 graphic below. Wellbeing Tourism is the “new tourist” encompassing the integration of naturopathic medicine, indigenous knowledge, spirituality, and providing a life-long quest for knowledge we call Resource for Life.
Guided events are not charged in units of time and topic, or as packages like wellness tourism, rather the outcome is recognized generally regardless of units and time.
Fig #1 : Medical, Wellness and Wellbeing Tourism charted
Fig #2 : Wellbeing Tourism rises above the Wellness Tourism destinations utilizing indigenous knowledge in each culture-based setting.
Horwath HTL published a recent article titled “Merging Medical and Wellness Tourism in Integrative Wellness Destinations” here. Fig #1 and #2 are based on this publication, revised to reflect Wellbeing Tourism.