The Number of Wellness-Certified Buildings Explodes One clear indication of the extraordinary rise of wellness real estate is the number of projects earning wellness building certifications in recent years. The GWI’s new report, Wellness Real Estate: Looking Beyond COVID-19, finds that the total number of wellness-certified building projects from the two big players, The Well Building Standard (WELL) and Fitwel, have grown ninefold in the last three years. As of August 2021, there were…
Employees—whether hotel workers or investment bankers—are quitting, and superficial “wellness programs” aren’t going to reverse it By Thierry Malleret, economist A recent report from McKinsey that surveyed employers and employees in Australia, Canada, Singapore, the UK, and the US to investigate the “Great Resignation” (or “Great Attrition”) phenomenon found out that 40% of the employee respondents are “at least somewhat likely to quit in the next…
How the pandemic has increased the importance of all kinds of wellness for consumers has been much discussed. For the sake of proving the case of “wellness expansion,” let’s just take fitness—one of the sectors hit the hardest by the pandemic. The major fitness researcher IHRSA reported this summer that during the pandemic, 22% of all fitness facilities globally closed permanently–(and they document the market declines for every global region). But in large…
“Inconspicuous Consumption” Is Rising and Driving Growth for the Wellness Industry By Thierry Malleret, economist The joint forces of the pandemic and the climate crisis have accelerated a trend already brewing below the surface for some years: the rise of inconspicuous consumption. Nowadays, conspicuous consumption (i.e., buying expensive stuff for signaling) is often seen as vulgar, at least in the Western world, and is increasingly…
Air Quality Will Become Much Bigger Focus in the Wellness Industry and Investment Space By Thierry Malleret, economist This year, climate catastrophes are here for all to see: dramatic floods in China’s Henan province, parts of Europe and India, and Uganda; unbearably high temperatures in many parts of the world, including North Africa and Turkey; “unimaginable” wildfires in the West of the US, Canada and…
“Aging Well” Is a Pipedream without a Focus on Loneliness and Financial Wellness By Thierry Malleret, economist A new report (“Long and happy lives – The future of wellbeing in an ageing society”) published by the Danish Happiness Research Institute sheds some interesting light on the way in which wellbeing in later life is being threatened by increasing rates of loneliness and mental health problems.…
