In the US$6.3 trillion world of wellness, catering to women is the lowest-hanging fruit on the tree. Yet women’s wellness has historically been underfunded and underserved. In the US, women were rarely included in clinical trials before 1993, and in 2020, only 5 percent of global research and development funding was allocated to women’s health research.
Even spokespeople for the Global Wellness Institute, the largest research organization dedicated to tracking the industry, recognize their failure to collect data on what women need or want from the wellness space; they say they have found it more logical to focus on fitness and longevity in the past.
Canyon Ranch, a wellness retreat founded in 1979, said it plans to unveil its third location on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, next year, an ambitious 242 hectare ranch with the primary focus of women’s wellness.
Illustration: Tania Chou
Two-thirds of the company’s guests are women, Canyon Ranch CEO Mark Rivers said, referring to the company’s existing resorts in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Tucson, Arizona.
Yet that same demographic “is misunderstood and swallowed in general healthcare,” he said.
By focusing almost entirely on relaxation and beauty, yoga retreats and boot camps, the “spa industrial complex” is missing a massive part of what women care about: the physiological changes women face in different stages of their life.
It is a gap that companies such as Canyon Ranch have been racing to exploit, as people’s interest in wellness — and willingness to invest in it — has skyrocketed. To date, their efforts have typically manifested as the occasional treatment or themed retreat; there still is not a single wellness resort making women’s health their calling card.
The symptoms that women’s wellness retreats address — hot flashes, vaginal dryness, hair loss — have long felt too taboo to speak out loud, much less put on a sign. However, lately the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause have become publicly discussed and the subjects of bestselling books. Everyone from entertainer Oprah and actress Drew Barrymore to former US first lady Michelle Obama and actress Naomi Watts, who has her own menopause health product line, is talking about the stage in a woman’s life that for decades was vaguely referred to as “the change.”
By 2030 the world population of menopausal and postmenopausal women is projected to increase by 9 percent, to 1.2 billion, with a forecast market size of US$24.4 billion. Spas would have to cater to this powerful market or risk getting left behind. It is no wonder that wellness industry pioneers, including SHA Wellness in Mexico and Spain, Ananda in the Himalayas, and Kamalaya in Koh Samui, Thailand, offer programs to address fertility, pelvic floor dysfunction and more. And the growing discourse around these issues for women has made it easier for men to admit to similar concerns too.
“The rise in awareness around the gender health gap — particularly the lack of persistent data on female hormones and health — has helped normalize conversations that were long overdue,” said Anna Bjurstam, head of wellness at Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, which earlier this year introduced a female wellness pilot program in partnership with women’s health expert Mindy Pelz.
“Let’s face it, the wellness industry has historically centered on weight loss and aesthetics. But women want to feel good, not just look good. What we’re seeing now is a shift toward empowerment, education and energy,” she said.
Rivers said that his resort would be the industry’s first dedicated women’s wellness practice.
“There’s a lot of noise in the space, but we’re actually making an investment in it,” he said. Canyon Ranch Austin is a sizeable investment, initially priced at approximately US$122 million. Rivers confirmed the cost is now about US$500 million, of which US$50 million would be devoted to the largest spa in Texas, about 3,716m2, with 37 treatment rooms.
When Canyon Ranch opened in Tucson in the 1970s, it was a departure from the era’s trendy, weight loss-focused “fat farms.” From the start, the brand worked with nutritionists and fitness experts to offer a lifestyle-driven approach to well-being.
“We are not a hospital or medical clinic,” Rivers said. “We are a resort focused on health as a lifestyle choice.”
The company said that since its founding, it has welcomed 1 million guests and curated a team of board-certified medical doctors, including US Olympic Committee medical adviser Jennifer Wagner and former US surgeon general Richard Carmona.
“If women have been short-sold by the medical world, I also feel like they have been getting short-sold by the wellness space,” Global Wellness Institute research director Beth McGroarty said, who has no affiliation with Canyon Ranch’s forthcoming resort, but considers it to be groundbreaking in its ambitions. “We suddenly saw all of these menopause programs, but many are rooted in pampering, community and celebrity-driven supplements. Canyon Ranch is adding the medical piece.”
Although Austin would focus on women’s health, Tucson would be considered Canyon Ranch’s hub for all things longevity and the Lenox location, in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains, would tackle burnout. Stays at the Austin outpost would be priced from US$1,400 per person, per night — including pickleball clinics, infrared sauna sessions and wine-paired tasting menus.
Canyon Ranch Austin is the first resort the company is building from scratch; the others fill historic, retrofitted buildings. A little less than an hour from downtown in rural-feeling Spicewood, the project is being designed by award-winning architecture firm Lake Flato. It would have 141 hotel rooms, 134 residences, six racket sports courts, two pools and an outdoor cooking studio centered around grilling. The onsite female health facility, called the Women’s Wellness Collective at Canyon Ranch Austin, would address the evolving needs of women from their 30s onward; it would cover a wide range of health concerns, including sleep, nutrition, postpartum depression and midlife beauty.
Men would be welcome, too. Blood work, bone density scans, sleep screenings and other medical tests would all be recommended or prescribed according to gender, age and individualized health concerns; the same would apply to the fitness offerings.
In a state that so heavily polices reproductive medicine, Canyon Ranch has decided not to include reproductive health in its offerings, and would not be staffed with obstetricians and gynecologists.
The brand’s other properties have a high volume of birth specialists, and Rivers said the Austin location would offer prenatal massages, and pre and postbirth body work. Prescription-based hormone replacement therapy would also be available.
That is not to say that beauty would be an afterthought.
Hair thinning and skin elasticity are examples that beauty and women’s wellness go hand in hand, Rivers said.
The spa would be prepared to deal with these topics holistically, he added.
The intention is to give guests tools and techniques that they can carry home, Canyon Ranch said, adding that it hoped that some people would want to live the Canyon Ranch life for good.
Like many of its peers, it is offering two and three bedroom homes for sale, from US$3.4 million, near the new Austin resort. Each residence is equipped with wellness features such as saunas, cold plunges, recovery lockers stocked with massage tools and foam rollers, and stargazing perches with telescopes, as well as access to the spa and the resort’s 35-plus daily activities.
That, in some ways, paints another version of the future of wellness resorts, in which people no longer vacation to establish healthy habits, but relocate for them. At the very least, it is a secondary strategy that plays to either gender.
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