Is Singapore Changing How Destinations Approach Wellness?
Singapore's Tourism 2040 strategy prioritises high-value wellness experiences in urban settings, positioning the city-state as a leader in luxury wellness tourism.
Singapore Tourism Board recently announced its Tourism 2040 roadmap and it provides an interesting perspective about how the luxury wellness market is expected to evolve. While the headline $50 billion tourism target by 2040 is impressive, the real story lies in how Singapore plans to achieve it: deliberately shifting from maximising visitor numbers to maximising visitor value, with wellness positioned as a key driver of this strategy.
This approach offers a compelling alternative to the volume-driven growth models that dominate tourism planning. Singapore's roadmap addresses a challenge many destinations and luxury properties face with how to increase revenue and profitability without overwhelming infrastructure or diluting the guest experience.
The city-state's recent performance suggests this strategy is working - Singapore achieved record tourism receipts of nearly $30 billion in 2024 despite welcoming only 16.5 million international visitors, well below pre-pandemic levels.
The Value-Over-Volume Approach
The concept of prioritising value over volume isn't unique to tourism, it's a fundamental strategy across luxury markets. High-end automobile manufacturers like Ferrari deliberately limit production to maintain exclusivity and command premium pricing. Similarly, luxury fashion houses like Hermès control distribution carefully, creating waiting lists for signature items rather than simply producing more to meet demand. The strategy focuses on cultivating relationships with fewer, higher-spending clients and not expanding the customer base at the expense of exclusivity.
In hospitality, boutique luxury hotel groups like Aman have long emphasised fewer rooms at substantially higher rates. Their properties average just 40 rooms compared to hundreds at conventional luxury hotels, yet command rates often double or triple their competitors.
What these examples share is recognition that growth doesn't necessarily require more customers or more units, it can come from extracting greater value from each transaction through exceptional experiences, personalisation, and perceived scarcity.
Luxury brands like Hermès demonstrate the power of value over volume by carefully controlling distribution to maintain exclusivity and premium pricing.
Wellness as a Key Driver
Wellness aligns perfectly with value-over-volume strategies across luxury hospitality. The economics are compelling: wellness travellers outspend standard tourists by approximately 40% per trip while seeking highly personalised experiences that naturally command premium pricing. From bespoke treatment programs with exclusive brands to state-of-the-art fitness offerings, these interactions create value far beyond standardised offerings.
This market's appeal also extends beyond higher spending to its demographic composition. Wellness tourism attracts precisely the affluent travellers who are less price-sensitive and more experience-focused. With the global wellness tourism market projected to reach $1.9 trillion by 2032, destinations can tap into a concentrated pool of high-value visitors without needing to attract substantially greater numbers.
What's particularly notable with Singapore’s 2040 Roadmap is how wellness has been elevated from a supplementary offering to a foundational element of the strategy. Wellness is seen as a key driver for increasing visitor spend and encouraging repeat visits, and recent momentum reflects this. With 47 luxury spa establishments now operating in Singapore, including 12 new openings in the past 18 months, along with the launch of government funding and incentives for wellness-focused developments, Singapore seems poised to capitalise on the growing wellness tourism market.
Dubai vs. Singapore: Different Paths to the Same Guest
Dubai's expansive wellness facilities, like the award-winning AWAKEN Spa at Atlantis The Palm, reflect its "build it and they will come" approach to luxury wellness tourism.
While compelling, the value-over-volume strategy faces challenges. With more destinations and properties pursuing high-value travellers, competition intensifies. For example, Dubai and Singapore are essentially competing for the same wellness-oriented luxury guests, but with different offerings.
Dubai's strategy is expansion-driven, with wellness as one component within its broader luxury ecosystem. The UAE luxury spa market, valued at $1.4 billion in 2024 with projected 8.5% annual growth through 2034, reflects Dubai's tendency to build impressive facilities first and let market demand follow. This means individual luxury properties are driving wellness development without coordinated planning.
Singapore, by contrast, has made a clear strategic commitment by positioning wellness as a central driver in its tourism framework. This deliberate positioning creates alignment between wellness initiatives and broader tourism objectives, with the entire ecosystem oriented toward attracting higher-spending visitors rather than simply more visitors.
Strategic intent is the difference-maker. Dubai embraces wellness as part of its "build it and they will come" approach to luxury tourism, while Singapore has made a more deliberate choice to leverage wellness as a transformative force in its tourism development. This strategic clarity explains why Singapore's approach, despite targeting a smaller absolute number of wellness travellers than Dubai, may ultimately prove more effective at maximising value from this growing market segment.
I think this insight is valuable at both brand and property levels too, and an important reminder that in a world fixated on “more”, there remains tremendous value in better.