ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to analyse new trends in wellness tourism following the post-COVID era, where the focus shifted from hedonic to more restorative forms of tourism. Some authors predicted an increasing interest in health and wellness tourism post-COVID. Pocinho, Garcês and Neves de Jesus stated that “Wellbeing and wellness can be attractive factors for new tourists and thus open doors to developing new products and activities in destinations”. This, they argued, can make it possible to ‘refresh’ tourism, to change tourists’ behaviour and to help solve pre-COVID problems like overtourism. Discussions about the future of tourism include the concept of resilience, which applies not only to destinations but to residents and tourists as well. Pocinho et al. argue that resilience is a concept that is intimately related to wellbeing and helps to deal effectively with adversity. This is a broad subject that naturally lends itself to essential discussions about the impacts of tourism, resident wellbeing and sustainable destination development. One of the Sustainable Development Goals focuses specifically on Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG3) with several others emphasising especially resident wellbeing (e.g., SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities). In the future, it is predicted that wellbeing will become more central to government and stakeholder policy. Sustainable destination management will prioritise resident wellbeing and tourism businesses and industry will offer more wellness programmes for tourists. This chapter focuses more on the latter than on the wellbeing of local residents, but it is recognised that the two should be inextricably connected in a more resilient and regenerative future.
