Omtrips Weekly · #12 · 11 November 2026

Omtrips Weekly, Edition 12: The wellness economy hits $7.5 trillion, Clinique La Prairie opens in Phuket, and every room in a Beppu hotel gets its own hot spring

Eighteen stories from the week in wellness travel, for the people who host it and the people who book it.

The Big Story

The wellness economy hits $7.5 trillion, and wellness travel is closing in on a trillion of its own

Global Wellness Institute10 Nov 2026

The Global Wellness Institute unveiled its 2026 Global Wellness Economy Monitor at the Global Wellness Summit this week, and the headline figure is US$7.5 trillion for 2025, up 8.9 percent in a single year and 49 percent since 2019, with US$10.9 trillion forecast by 2030. The number that matters most to anyone reading this is wellness tourism: US$982 billion in 2025, up 11.4 percent year on year, and projected to pass US$1.4 trillion by 2030, which would make it one of seven sectors worth more than a trillion each. Underneath that, spas grew 12.8 percent to US$184 billion and thermal and mineral springs reached US$78 billion, while the fastest regional gains in wellness tourism came from the Middle East and North Africa at 21.5 percent, sub-Saharan Africa at 18.1 percent and Asia at 15.6 percent, against a United States that still accounts for 36 percent of all wellness tourism spending. The full report runs 160 pages across 11 sectors and is free to download.

Industry & Destinations

The company behind BookYogaRetreats is bankrupt, and hosts have until 9 December to file a claim

Dutch Insolvency Register2 Nov 2026

Tripaneer B.V., the Amsterdam company behind BookYogaRetreats, BookSurfCamps, BookYogaTeacherTraining, BookHorseRidingHolidays and BookAllSafaris, was declared bankrupt on 30 September after a suspension of payments collapsed, and the trustee filed its first financial report on 2 November. Deposits taken for stays that had not yet happened sit inside the estate, so most hosts have received nothing for future arrivals, and travelers are being pointed toward card issuers, PayPal and travel insurance for partial recovery. Trustee V.G.M. Leferink is handling the estate through the Amsterdam District Court under case F.13/26/306, with a creditors' meeting set for 9 December, so any host owed money needs to file before then. BookRetreats.com is a separate company and is not part of the bankruptcy.

Airbnb's new house rules take effect on 20 November, and hosts are talking about going direct

Specrom STR Intel21 Oct 2026

From 20 November, every reservation booked on Airbnb falls under a narrowed house rules policy in which only seven things stay enforceable: the overnight guest cap, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography and locking up at checkout. Everything else becomes a request guests are merely encouraged to follow, checkout chores such as stripping beds or taking trash off site can no longer be required, fines are prohibited, no rule may be added once a booking is confirmed, and hosts may no longer collect guest contact, identity or financial data or put a wifi sign in page behind an email address. The listing editor flags anything noncompliant, and persistent violations can cut a listing's search visibility. Host forums have filled with owners saying they will push guests toward booking direct instead, which is the part worth watching, because the independent, design led holiday homes that make the best listings are exactly the ones with least to gain from a rulebook written for scale.

The owner of ChatGPT has quietly bought a travel booking startup and switched it off

TechCrunch10 Nov 2026

Odessia, a travel planning startup barely a year old whose booking tool launched about five months ago, has been acquired on undisclosed terms in what TechCrunch reads as a hire rather than a purchase, and the tool has already been shut down. Its founder is Francis Davidson, who started Sonder in 2014 as a student, built it to US$143 million in revenue and a unicorn valuation, then watched it go public by SPAC and collapse into bankruptcy after a Marriott partnership fell through; he resigned in June 2025 and says he now works on the buyer's travel ambitions. Odessia had raised a US$6 million pre-seed round led by Sequoia, and the buyer already counts Booking.com, Expedia and KAYAK among its partners. Nothing has been announced about what comes next, which is precisely the part worth watching for anyone whose bookings arrive through a search box.

Aman names its third brand Atma and builds it around performance, with Novak Djokovic as partner

Skift10 Nov 2026

Aman Group has confirmed Atma, a brand built on sport, wellness and what it calls performance living, with Novak Djokovic signed as a global partner shaping its longevity, nutrition and programming. The first address is a 1,049ft tower on Miami's Brickell waterfront from OKO Group and Oak Row Equities, holding a hotel, branded residences, an invitation only club and a 120,000sq ft wellness center with indoor tennis, squash and padel courts, a thermal spa and a medical wellness center. Hold it lightly: completion is targeted for 2031, no room count or financial terms were disclosed, and Aman's second brand Janu has opened a single property since 2020 while Janu Dubai has slipped to 2029.

Nature 65 percent, sports 46 percent, retreats 41 percent: where wellness trips actually happen

PR Newswire10 Nov 2026

FINN Partners and GSIQ Tourism Insights surveyed more than 7,000 engaged international travelers across nine markets for Wellness Travel on the Move, also unveiled this week at the Global Wellness Summit. Three quarters had taken an active wellness focused trip abroad in the past two years, and confidence was the outcome that grew most, from 38 percent who hoped for it to 55 percent who came home with it. For hosts it is a practical note on how to describe a trip: a hiking week or a surf camp now sits on the same shelf as a yoga retreat, and the retreat category itself is widening past yoga and spa into recovery, performance, women's health and burnout. The release publishes no fieldwork dates or question wording, so read the percentages as direction.

Britain crowns its first sauna Herbal Cup champion, and she is off to Prague

European Spa Magazine9 Nov 2026

Seven aufguss masters competed over two days at Hoar Cross Hall in Staffordshire for Britain's first Herbal Cup title, a contest in which each master builds a steam ritual and a sauna ritual out of self made products, working with whisks, fans, towels, smoke and resins, judged on how they handle heat, plants and people and on a themed presentation table. Natalie Campo of Sakura Sauna Haus took the title, with Alison Yates of Hoar Cross Hall second and Alex Irwin of the Sauna Dome third, and the top two go to the World Championships at Aquapalace in Prague from 25 to 29 November. The Herbal Cup began in the Czech Republic in 2013 and now runs across 18 countries, which is a reminder that sauna has a competitive circuit most of this industry has never heard of.

New Stays

Every room in this 21 room Beppu hotel has a hot spring bath carved from stone

Rus Tourism News10 Nov 2026

Sekiya Resort, an independent operator based in Beppu, opens Rock and Steam in the Kannawa district of Kyushu on 18 December, built around what it calls modern toji, the old Japanese practice of staying in a hot spring town purely to rest. All 21 guestrooms have a private natural hot spring bath cut into stone with views over Beppu Bay and the mountains behind, selected sauna suites add private saunas developed with sauna specialist Mikie Sasano, and work by Japanese and international artists runs through the guest and shared spaces. A free public preview runs on 8 December, and no room rates have been published yet.

Domes restores a 1959 Modernist landmark on a quiet peninsula near Mount Athos

Sleeper9 Nov 2026

Domes Resorts has detailed three Greek openings for Casa Collective, the lifestyle group it acquired from founder Remo Masala, and the most interesting of them avoids the islands entirely. Casa Cook Athos opens in summer 2027 inside a restored 1959 Modernist building by Periklis Sakellarios, reimagined by Berlin studio Vision Alphabet, with 60 keys and 45 more to follow, direct beach access and a spa programming yoga, breathwork, meditation and sound rituals. Also landing in 2027: the adults only Cook's Club Kassandra at Kriopigi on Halkidiki, the brand's first on the Greek mainland, and six cave style residences as Casa Cook Santorini in Firostefani village.

Ensana enters Germany with a 4,500sq m thermal spa in a Bavarian spa town

Spa Business3 Nov 2026

The European health spa operator has reopened the 148 room Fuerstenhof in Bad Griesbach after a renovation, its first property in Germany, built on the town's mineral rich thermal water. The 4,500sq m spa holds two indoor thermal pools, an outdoor thermal pool, two whirlpools, saunas, steam facilities and a salt grotto, with another 1,000sq m of outdoor sunbathing and relaxation space. A medical wellness offer is scheduled to follow in early 2027.

Retreats

Clinique La Prairie opens 40 pool villas in a square kilometer of Phuket forest

European Spa Magazine9 Nov 2026

The Swiss clinic that has been selling longevity out of Montreux since 1931 has opened its first resort in Thailand and in Southeast Asia, inside the Tri Vananda wellness community on Phuket. Forty private pool villas sit in a square kilometer of protected forest and lakes, alongside a 50m pool, a hydrotherapy circuit with sauna, steam room, cold plunge, hot tub and salt room, a meditation hall beside a natural lake, an aerial yoga studio, and a genuinely clinical wing holding radiology, cardiology, cryotherapy and IV therapy. Every stay opens with a Longevity Master Assessment reading more than 300 biomarkers, which feeds four signature programs of at least seven days each, Reverse Aging, Essence of Vitality, Master Detox and Life Reset, with two shorter introductions for anyone not ready to give up a week. The brand has a resort at AMAALA slated for 2027 and a longevity hub in New York's Hudson Valley for 2028, and no rates have been published.

Chenot adds an immune module to every program, and is giving it away until the end of the year

European Spa Magazine6 Nov 2026

The Chenot Group has introduced an immune module across its portfolio, which spans properties in Switzerland, Azerbaijan, Italy, Montenegro and Morocco, pairing comprehensive blood testing, microbiome analysis and selected biomarkers with a personalized plan of treatments, nutrition, movement and lifestyle work. The framing is preventive rather than a promise to boost anyone's immunity, which is the right way round and worth borrowing for any host writing a program description. Chenot Palace Weggis is running it as a complimentary add-on to any Chenot program for stays until 31 December 2026, though neither the module's length nor its standalone price has been published.

Plant Medicine & Psychedelic Research

Compass files its application, and the FDA now has three of these drugs under review at once

Psychedelic Alpha9 Nov 2026

Compass Pathways has submitted its new drug application for COMP360, a psilocybin treatment for treatment resistant depression, on a package drawing on more than 1,000 participants, which the company describes as the largest cohort in the field's development history. Chief executive Kabir Nath framed the filing as years of perseverance by patients, advocates and researchers, and Compass is now building toward a launch in the first half of 2027. With Usona's application for major depressive disorder filed a week earlier and Resilient Pharmaceuticals' resubmitted MDMA package from the summer, the agency is weighing three applications at once, and no decision date has been made public.

The DEA wants to make 57 times more ibogaine next year

Marijuana Moment9 Nov 2026

A draft Federal Register notice filed on 9 November proposes 2027 production quotas that lift ibogaine from 210 grams to 12,002 grams, MDMA from 12,000 to 33,296 grams, psilocybin from 50,000 to 60,000 grams and psilocyn from 80,000 to 93,600 grams, which the agency ties to expanded research and to an executive order signed in April on psychedelic access. Ibogaine is the figure to notice, because a 57 fold jump in legally manufacturable supply is what a regulator does when it expects trials at a scale that does not yet exist. Formal publication was due this week and opens a 30 day comment period, and it is worth being clear that quotas govern manufacture for research rather than legal access for anybody else.

The room changed the result: a small imaging trial hints that setting shapes the effect

PsyPost3 Nov 2026

Copenhagen University Hospital gave 15 healthy adults a single psilocybin dose and scanned a marker of synaptic density a week later, found no significant overall change of about 2 to 3 percent, and stopped the trial early when an interim look suggested it would not reach its target. The exploratory half is the interesting half: the ten dosed in a dedicated room with a curated playlist reported more intense experiences and more positive lasting effects at three months and showed a rise of about 5 to 6 percent in the frontal cortex and hippocampus, while the five dosed inside a scanner showed none. Nobody was randomized, the scanner group was five people, the two settings differed in several ways at once, and the authors call it hypothesis generating, but it is a first piece of imaging evidence for something retreat hosts have argued for years.

Biohacking & Longevity

Fifty four percent reached remission on a twelve week diet and exercise program

News Medical3 Nov 2026

The RESET for Remission trial randomized 96 adults aged 18 to 45 who had obesity and type 2 diabetes diagnosed within the previous six years, across Leicester, Montreal and Edmonton, to usual care or a 12 week program of 800 to 900 calories a day plus two supervised hours a week of aerobic and resistance training. At 24 weeks, 27 of 50 on the program, or 54 percent, were in remission against 2 of 46 on usual care, with 7.5kg more weight lost, grip strength up 7.6 percent, fitness relative to body weight up 10.3 percent and no serious adverse events, published in The Lancet Regional Health Americas. There was no diet only arm, so the exercise contribution cannot be isolated, the group was small and selected, and follow up stopped at 24 weeks, so nobody yet knows how long the remission holds.

Five social sauna clubs in one small city, and three of them opened inside a month

Boulder Reporting Lab5 Nov 2026

Boulder, Colorado will have at least five dedicated social sauna clubs by mid November: eversky opened on 25 October with a Finnish sauna and a listening room modeled on a Japanese jazz kissa, Berner Collective opened on 7 November inside a renovated 1904 church alongside a coffee shop and a yoga studio, and Nuvania follows on 15 November with a 12 person infrared sauna, a 15 person traditional sauna, a 12 person group cold plunge and benches that lift out for hot yoga. What the founders are selling is not a treatment but a third place without alcohol or phones, which is the transferable part, and one of them put the competitive question to rest neatly: there are far more sauna curious people than any of us could pull from each other. The reporting is admirably honest that evidence for long term benefit is thin, that two local sauna businesses were shut down this year over permitting and water issues, and that nobody knows whether one city can carry five.

In a sleep trial for older cancer survivors, the ordinary exercise class outperformed tai chi

News Medical6 Nov 2026

A randomized trial in Brain Medicine put 113 men aged 55 and over who had finished cancer treatment and had significant fatigue into tai chi qigong, a matched general exercise class or usual care, meeting twice a week for an hour over 12 weeks. No group beat another outright, but the plain exercise class improved sleep quality from baseline at six weeks and still held the gain at three months, while tai chi drifted the same way without reaching significance, and every change sat below the threshold for a clinically meaningful difference. Both active groups had lost their gains by 12 months, the trial was underpowered for between group comparisons, the participants were mostly White, college educated men with prostate cancer, and sleep was self reported.

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