Why wellness is your hotel’s most important new booking driver

For years, the hotel spa often sat in its own corner of the business. Guests might discover the treatment menu after booking their room, call to check availability or send an email and hope someone replied before they arrived. It was a nice amenity to have – sometimes essential for a five-star rating – but rarely central to the commercial strategy. 

That’s changing. Increasingly, guests aren’t simply booking a hotel and adding a spa treatment. They’re choosing the hotel because of its wellness offering in the first place. 

For owners and operators, this presents a big opportunity. Let's explore how wellness can influence room bookings, guest spending and the overall value of a property. 

Wellness is becoming a reason to book 

On this episode of Matt Talks Hospitality, Matt Welle spoke to Steve Porter, Co-Founder of Trybe, a platform for spa and wellness bookings and operations. Steve gave his first-hand insights on why the sector is becoming an increasingly important part of hotel performance. 

The global wellness economy was worth $6.8 trillion in 2024, growing by around 7.5% annually. Wellness tourism and spas were growing faster still, at approximately 14.5% a year. Steve also highlighted that hotels with major wellness facilities generate, on average, 108% higher total revenue per available room (TRevPAR) than hotels without them. 

Of course, simply installing a spa won't automatically double a hotel’s revenue. What these numbers challenge is the idea that wellness is simply an expensive extra. 

As Steve explained, spa bookings and room revenue are closely connected. “It was an afterthought. It was an upsell. But now, it's quite often the reason that people are booking the hotel in the first place.” 

If wellness is influencing the original booking decision, its commercial value extends beyond the spa’s own profit and loss statement. It can help a property stand out in a crowded market, attract guests willing to travel for a particular experience and create reasons to return. 

The experience starts before arrival 

Historically, booking a room and booking a spa treatment were two separate tasks. Guests might confirm their accommodation online, then find themselves navigating a different booking system, calling the spa or discovering that their preferred treatment was already fully booked. 

The challenge isn't simply digitising an appointment calendar. Spa availability is much more complicated than room availability. A treatment might require a particular room, a qualified therapist, specialist equipment and a specific duration. The therapist also needs sufficient time between appointments and limits on how many treatments they can perform in a day. 

Online booking requires all those resources to align. Guests should be able to explore wellness options and plan their stay before they arrive, while the hotel needs the systems to make those promises deliverable. 

Mews and Trybe work together so that guests can explore room availability and build a wellness itinerary around their stay. Rather than treating the spa as a separate purchase, the booking journey brings accommodation and wellness experiences together. 

After booking, pre-arrival communications, online check-in and QR codes in guest rooms all help guests discover and reserve experiences. The aim is to make the next step obvious without making the guest work for it. 

Advance bookings give operators a clearer view of demand, allowing them to plan staffing, manage capacity and identify opportunities to sell experiences that might otherwise go unused. They also reduce the risk of guests arriving with a particular treatment in mind, only to find there’s no availability.  

Make every part of the property work harder 

The most effective hotel operators think about the entire stay experience, not just the treatment rooms. This could be everything from lobby lighting and scents to sleep amenities, gyms and toiletries. 

This holistic approach reflects a broader change in guest expectations. Younger generations, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, increasingly treat wellness as part of their identity and routine rather than an occasional indulgence. 

A strong wellness proposition needs to feel consistent across the property. A premium treatment menu means little if the rest of the experience doesn’t support the promise. Equally, a thoughtfully designed stay can create value well beyond the spa itself. 

The opportunity also extends beyond traditional wellness facilities. Trybe works with properties offering activities ranging from outdoor pursuits and bowling to ticketed cinema nights and classes. Some spas even deliver treatments in guest bedrooms, allowing them to serve more guests without being restricted to a handful of treatment rooms. 

For owners looking to make better use of their property, this opens up new possibilities. Underused spaces, specialist facilities and local partnerships can all become bookable experiences. The key is to create something guests genuinely value, then make it easy to discover, reserve and deliver. 

Technology should empower more human moments 

More experiences also mean more operational complexity. Hotels must balance the needs of overnight guests with local members. That includes controlling capacity in pools and thermal facilities, and making sure the right people and resources are available at the right time. 

That’s where better technology becomes essential. Operators need visibility into demand and utilization so they can make informed decisions about availability, staffing and pricing. Dynamic pricing already plays a significant role in hotel rooms, but spa and wellness revenue management has further to go. 

AI could extend those capabilities, helping spa managers identify opportunities and make better decisions. The technology can act as a kind of spa consultant, surfacing recommendations while keeping people involved in the final decisions. 

The objective isn’t to make wellness feel automated; it’s to remove the administrative work that gets in the way of personal service. 

As Steve put it: “You're not going to offer a good guest experience without good technology. And good technology is technology that encourages more human touch points, less system use.” 

Measure wellness by the value it creates 

For hotel owners and operators, the next step is to look beyond treatment revenue. Consider whether wellness influences booking decisions, drives room demand, encourages repeat visits and creates additional spending opportunities across the property. 

Then examine whether the guest journey and operational systems are set up to capture that value. Can guests book experiences alongside their room? Can teams see demand early enough to plan capacity? Can your property make better use of its facilities without compromising the experience? 

Not every hotel needs a spa, and not every wellness investment will make commercial sense. But where guests are choosing properties for their wellness offering, treating it as a standalone cost centre risks missing a much bigger opportunity. 

For more discussion about the value and importance of wellness facilities, check out the full Matt Talks Hospitality conversation between Matt and Steve. 

Watch the full episode