PART 2

BY KEVIN KELLY AND PETER YESAWICH, PH. D.

A BAREN BRANDSCAPE When respondents were shown 36 prominent wellness resort brands and asked which they would prefer for a future trip intended to enhance their wellness or well-being, 53 percent selected“ none of the above,” revealing either a void in brand leadership or the absence of meaningful brand differentiation— or both. Among respondents who expressed a preference, Six Senses and Canyon Ranch were cited most frequently, yet each by only 10 percent of respondents, positioning them as“ reference brands” rather than category leaders.

One noteworthy variance was observed among WELLZoomers™: Six Senses received the highest preference rating, at 17 percent. While still modest, this suggests Six Senses may have an early foothold with the generation that will shape future demand for much of the industry’ s products, services and experiences, signaling a potential pathway to category leadership if it aligns with this cohort’ s evolving expectations around integrated well-being.

AN INTEGRATED ECOSYSTEM WELLZoomers also displayed more integration in their pursuit of well-being. Older cohorts tended to engage more selectively and maintain a conceptual separation between wellness practices and well-being outcomes, assembling a toolkit of discrete components. WELLZoomers, by contrast, engaged more broadly and appeared to organize the components into a more integrated approach.

This integrative orientation created greater commonality among WELLZoomers across the three geographies tested. Their evaluative logic served to define them as a global, unified and scalable target market segment characterized by emotional urgency, financial agency, digital fluency and preventive orientation.

They are the first cohort to internalize well-being as an interconnected life architecture rather than a collection of products, services and experiences. They don’ t simply seek more products and programs, accumulating them as inputs. Rather, they actively try to coalesce and coordinate them.

“ UNDERSTANDING WELLZOOMERS: The market segment that will soon rock the wellness world” appeared in the September / October 2026 Pulse and introduced WELLZoomers as a transnational cohort of well-seekers defined by shared values, emotional urgency, digital fluency and a highly integrated approach to well-being. ISPA members may access previous magazine issues at pulse. experienceispa. com.

WELLSurvey™ 2.0, conducted online by co-authors Kevin Kelly and Peter Yesawich in November 2025, included 2,648 respondents from the U. S., U. K. and Germany, 857 of whom were WELLZoomers. The sample was screened to yield respondents evenly split by gender, with median annual household incomes representing the top half of households in the U. S., U. K. and Germany by annual income.

As Part 1 noted, WELLZoomers do not view wellness as a collection of discrete purchases. They are building an integrated ecosystem supporting their physical, mental and emotional health— their well-being— to achieve vibrant health and longevity. That orientation creates meaningful implications for wellness resorts, spas and other industry providers seeking to earn the trust and loyalty of this influential market segment.

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