Fitness tourism: a new round of active leisure
Text: Karina Sembe
The total fitness boom has its extremes and vicissitudes, but in general, the fascination with sports is perhaps the best thing that has happened to society lately. Sport has so thoroughly penetrated into our lives that it even managed to create an alternative to the usual travel format: we suddenly realized that during a vacation you can not only lazily sunbathe on the beach or photograph architectural monuments, but also acquire useful contacts during a kayak swim.
According to statistics, by 2017 the world market of wellness tourism will grow 50% faster than the overall performance of the industry as a whole, and for the current year World Travel Guide predicts a serious boom in fitness tourism. This opens up new business opportunities: wellness hotels with a focus on an integrated approach to a healthy lifestyle will be gaining momentum, ready to provide guests with round-the-clock access to their favorite sports and to the smallest details a thoughtful menu. Sensing the trend, cheered up and traditional-style hotels. A fitness boutique with sports nutrition is now operating in the Moscow Lotte hotel, and showers with a rain shower were built in the gym, and there are plenty of such examples. In hotels of the world network Fairmont you can rent sports equipment - from clothing to yoga mats. They also have a popular service called Running Concierge, which consists in the fact that an employee of the hotel helps to choose the best route for jogging in a new city, making it together with you.
New services are added to the usual gymnasium and spa procedures, which motivate travelers to spend holidays or business trips with a separation from the smartphone and the bar. Hotels and spa resorts establish partnerships with fitness clubs and even racetracks and hire trainers in fashionable sports for a permanent job - from bikram yoga to kickboxing and fencing. Not only hotels turn into sports clubs, but vice versa: for example, the creators of the network of elite American fitness clubs Equinox plan to open their own network of hotels.
Fortunately, the fashion for sports is not limited to jerks of big business in the luxury segment. There are more and more young initiatives that are ready to revive the format of wellness trips and make sports leisure around the world more accessible. Sport has proved its powerful potential in terms of socialization: it is able to unite all kinds of people eager for a healthy and fun-filled lifestyle. Today, large companies regularly send their employees for team building in snowboard camps and mountain spa resorts.
Fortunately, the fashion for sports is not limited to jerks of big business in the luxury segment
Moreover, entire communities are being created for organizing various sport courses, whose mission is to expand people's ideas about active recreation, and "sedentary" local organizations are increasingly practicing outdoor activities. The Moscow "Sports Section", which helps to develop new sports in the company of like-minded people within Moscow and its environs, was chosen for wintering to surf in Sri Lanka and for the second year now goes snowboarding and skiing in Sochi. Sports school #Sekta organized a summer camp in Bulgaria last year, where members of the community under the guidance of coaches practiced yoga, Pilates and stretching, and the Kiev organization Surfin'UA takes enthusiasts several times a year to surf tours to Portugal, Canaries, Bali and the same Sri Lanka.
If the five-star fitness and luxury spa resorts are in the category of pleasures for the elite and also clearly bored by the vigorous representatives of the creative class, then surfing for reasonable money and get a lot of new impressions seems a much more pleasant idea. Going on a fitness adventure, you will secure not only a healthy body and spirit, but also the opportunity to explore the country and its culture from a new perspective. There are a lot of places in the world where you can go for active recreation: surf camps, hiking groups, large cycle stations and even Vipassana centers.
Under the conditions of total work stress, wellness retreats become a mecca for successful and busy ones with an emphasis on various types of pleasant activities - from yoga and martial arts to hiking and tennis. As a rule, being in retreats is accompanied by lectures, master classes, and sometimes meditation or even hypnotherapy sessions. In more advanced and, accordingly, expensive retreats, austerity often does not smell - they pay attention to a balanced diet and body care. There are more accessible options for adventure, where sport is at the forefront: in Portuguese Karma Surf Retreat, not only yoga is practiced, but also surfing and mountaineering.
Those who, even on vacation or on a business trip, cannot and do not want to sit still, from time to time cause slight bewilderment among fans of beach and beach leisure activities. It also has undeniable charms, but since sports in traveling is not just a series of push-ups and attacks, but a great way to make interesting contacts and see the host country in a completely new light, we say a solid "yes" to fitness tourism.
Photo: cover photo via Instagram