Why the wellness industry keeps describing features, and what it’s missing
Normal . Research
Ask most hotels, spas, or wellness brands what they offer, and you’ll get a list. Fitness facilities. Spa treatments. Yoga classes. A vegan menu. These are real and often well-executed offerings — but they describe a set of features, not an experience. And in a wellness market now valued at over $1.5 trillion globally, a feature list is no longer a position. It’s table stakes.
Normal . takes a different starting point: research before design. Before any brand can credibly stand for wellness, it needs an honest answer to a harder question — what does wellness actually mean to the people seeking it?
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Six dimensions, one global shift
McKinsey & Company’s 2021 wellness market study surveyed roughly 7,500 consumers across six countries and found that the definition of wellness itself has fundamentally broadened. Where wellness once meant fitness and nutrition, consumers today understand it across six interconnected dimensions: health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness. The same research found that consumer interest in wellness has grown sharply in every market studied over the past two to three years, even as people’s own sense of their wellness levels has stagnated or declined in most countries surveyed — a widening gap between how much people want wellness and how much they feel they’re getting it.
A separate global study from Euromonitor International put numbers behind just how far this shift has moved. Asked what being healthy actually means to them, consumers ranked mental wellbeing highest of all, at 65% — ahead of having a healthy immune system (62%), getting enough sleep (59%), simply feeling good (58%), and emotional wellbeing (56%). Three of the top five answers were not physical markers at all. They were states of mind.
Consumers are no longer separating physical health from mental and emotional wellbeing — they are asking for holistic care, not healthcare.
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Normal . Adaptation: Better Spirit, not Better Health
McKinsey’s original six dimensions are anchored by Better Health — the most clinical and broadly applicable of the six, extending to medical devices, telemedicine, and health tracking. It’s a dimension built for a consumer-products and healthcare context. For wellness-positioned hospitality brands, Normal . makes a deliberate adaptation: replacing Better Health with Better Spirit.
The substitution is not cosmetic. It reframes the same underlying need — a search for meaning beyond the physical — into a dimension that hospitality brands can genuinely own: connection with something greater than oneself. This is Normal .’s six-dimension model of holistic wellbeing:
Better Fitness — building physical strength and resilience through movement, not just routine.
Better Nutrition — understanding how what we eat shapes mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, not simply how it tastes.
Better Appearance — care for the body as an act of self-respect, not vanity.
Better Sleep — multisensory rest, not just a pillow and a dark room.
Better Mindfulness — daily practices like meditation and breathwork, woven into the rhythm of a stay.
Better Spirit — the search for meaning and connection with something greater than oneself.
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From research to ritual
A model is only as useful as what it produces. Normal . built this framework to do real work in hospitality brand and experience design — translating six abstract dimensions into named Experience Principles, Signature Spaces, and rituals that guests can actually feel.
The model was first developed and applied on Cicada Ubud, Autograph Collection — where it became the evidenced foundation for Tri Hita Karana, the Balinese philosophy of harmony Normal . adopted as the property’s Experience Principle, and ultimately for The Mark, the signature wellness ritual developed to meet Autograph Collection’s brand standard.
Since then, the model has informed Normal .’s work across its broader hospitality portfolio, including JW Marriott Greater China’s Luxury Essentials program.
Wherever it’s applied, the model starts from the same conviction: wellness was never the amenities. It was always the meaning.
Sources: McKinsey & Company, “Feeling good: The future of the $1.5 trillion wellness market,” April 2021. Euromonitor International, Health and Nutrition Survey, January–February 2022.
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