Research Practitioner Man Forward Motion Analytics Blue Hero

The Wellness Economy Is Bigger Than You Think, and So Is the Report About It

The Global Wellness Institute's 2025 Global Wellness Economy Monitor sizes up the entire wellness industry, sector by sector, and the number is enormous by anyone's standards. This includes practices like yours, whether you fancy being called an "economy" or not.

Page updated: 14 Aug 2026

Whole-practice growth for wellbeing firms. Rooted in Wiltshire UK, working worldwide.

Practices rarely think of themselves as part of a trillion-pound global economy, but according to this report, that is exactly what they are, filed somewhere between spa hotels and vitamin supplements.

Original Research	An annual attempt to put a dollar figure on the entire wellness world, from gyms to healers to wellness retreats.
Source	https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-GWI-WE-Monitor_DIGITAL-FINAL.pdf
Overview	The report breaks the wellness economy into eleven sectors, including mental wellness, traditional and complementary medicine, physical activity and wellness tourism, and is compiled annually by the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit industry body.
Year	Year not stated
Publisher	Industry body, publisher brand name(s)
Relevance to Wellbeing	High
Our Verdict	Too early to tell the numbers are impressive and the sector breakdown is useful, but the underlying figures are modelled estimates rather than something you could take to a bank.
Our Summary	It confirms wellness is not a niche interest but a proper global industry, which is nice to have in writing. The sector breakdown gives practices a rough sense of where they sit in the bigger picture. The headline figures are estimates built from national data and modelling, not a census of every therapy room and yoga studio. A trillion-dollar global figure tells you very little about footfall in your particular clinic on a wet Tuesday.
Our Geo View	Applies broadly to all countries, though the report does break figures down by region, so some markets will recognise themselves more than others.

Abstract of wellbeing niches and revenue flow

Recognise how this might impact your practice

Why this might matter to you

Coaching: this matters because coaching sits inside a bigger, more credible-sounding economy than most coaches ever mention in their marketing.
Therapy: this matters because "mental wellness" is now formally counted as an economic sector, which is one way to make a waiting list sound respectable.
Training: this matters because physical activity is one of the largest slices of this pie, so trainers can stop apologising for charging what they charge.
Alternative Healing: this matters because traditional and complementary medicine gets its own line in the report, official recognition some healers have been waiting years for.
Clinical: this matters because clinical wellness is treated as a growth sector here, not a fringe add-on to the NHS.
Retreat/Centre: this matters because wellness tourism is one of the report's headline categories, and retreats are basically the poster child for it.

Where this came from

The Global Wellness Institute has published its yearly sizing of the wellness economy, this time with 2025 in the title and a fresh set of sector totals.

Global Wellness Institute, 2025. Full PDF report, publicly available, not paywalled.

Credibility flags: economic modelling based on national and sector-level data, sample size not applicable in the usual sense, publisher is an industry body rather than an academic or government one.

How we scored this

A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.

58%

Practice fit, 50How new, 100How solid, 25

Marked down on how solid the method is, since the figures are modelled estimates rather than primary survey data, but scored well on how current it is and reasonably well on how directly it touches the six practice types.

It's worth considering changes to your marketing practices

What this means for your marketing

Put "part of a trillion-dollar global wellness economy" somewhere on your About page, quietly.
Say the words "growth sector" before a client asks whether wellness is just a passing trend.
Brief your team on which of the eleven sectors your practice actually sits in, so nobody guesses badly in a client meeting.
Use the regional breakdown if you operate internationally, it gives you something concrete to point at.
Do not quote the headline dollar figure as if it applies to your postcode specifically.

Who this is most useful for

Practice type	Relevance	Recommended action
Coaching	Medium	Reference the wider wellness economy for context, sparingly.
Therapy	High	Cite the mental wellness sector figures where credibility is needed.
Training	High	Use the physical activity sector data to justify pricing and positioning.
Alternative Healing	High	Point to the traditional and complementary medicine category as validation.
Clinical Practices	Medium	Use the clinical wellness growth framing in patient-facing materials cautiously.
Retreats/Centres	High	Lean on the wellness tourism figures in marketing to prospective guests.

Best before

Best before: this report is republished annually, so revisit it when the next edition lands, or check back with Global Wellness Institute directly if you want to quote a fresher figure.