Transcendent Travel Reigns Supreme And Will Cross The 1 Trillion Mark In 2024

16.05.2024 - 01:41 / forbes.com

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month – and if there is anything that travelers are seeking nowadays, it’s wellness. Let’s face it – health is the new wealth – and following on the most recent travel trends of sleep tourism and quiet luxury – people in general are seeking ways to travel in order to combat stress, depression, fatigue, burnout, and trauma.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, in 2022, the 819.4 Billion wellness trips taken (both internationally and domestically) represented 7.8% of all tourism trips – a much larger share than just a decade earlier. Unbelievably, wellness trips are projected to rise to 8.3% of all tourism trips by 2027, with wellness tourism crossing the 1 Trillion Mark in 2024. Beth McGroarty, VP of Research for the Global Wellness Institute, says that GWI experts say that wellness tourism will reach $1.63 Trillion by 2027. She told me, “People have become so much more intentional with wellness, specific about what they want to achieve in a retreat/program…they want to go deeper and experiment with wellness in ways they have never before.”

When seeking to alleviate distress, in the past most people have visited a luxury spa for a few days: Maybe some spa treatments, a walk around the labyrinth, and some good sleep. That was thought to be the “Answer” to hidden psychological burdens and burnout. This largely band-aid approach is slowly being replaced by traveling to psychedelic retreats as the gateway to good mental health, wholeness, and authenticity.” Ms. McGroarty added, “It’s safe to say there are hundreds and hundreds of psilocybin and psychedelic retreats opening each year, and operators report growth.” She cites psilocybin studies showing psilocybin’s lasting impact on major depression to its eye-opening potential impact on addiction/alcohol abuse to its potential for anxiety disorder to its well-researched, positive mental health impact on people with terminal or life-threatening diseases.

She explained to me that one reason why psychedelic wellness retreats are the future of psychedelic therapy delivery is that people grasp that the right environment for the “trip” is a wellness resort: A serene place in nature, with communal/shared experiences, and with other supportive wellness offerings.

Let's talk about "magic mushroom" retreats like MycoMeditations in Jamaica – the pioneer of it all, as stated by the GWI back in 2018.

“Many people in the world are walking trauma units and have never been diagnosed,” says Justin Townsend, CEO of MycoMeditations in Jamaica, considered by many to be the gold standard of mental health and wellness retreats offering psilocybin-assisted therapy. (Mr. Townsend’s experience in this field is quite extensive: He used