A Wellness Tourism Initiative to Alleviate Poverty Among Women

Abstract

This wellness tourism initiative is aimed at helping poor women in developing regions and countries escape from persistent poverty. The initiative is grounded in five key themes: (a) limited opportunities for women, due primarily to social and cultural constraints, to become productive members of the economy; (b) the dramatic growth in special interest travel, especially travel as it relates to health, wellness, and culinary tourism; (c) the increasing use of natural treatments and diets in developed countries to help people cope with stress and other ailments as an alternative to “modern” medicine with its myriad side effects; (d) the popularity of micro credit as a financing vehicle for incubating small businesses; and (e) the integration of the global supply chain making it easy to move materials across borders. At the confluence of these five themes lies an opportunity for poor women to create value with their traditionally endowed skills and abilities. In this concept note, I describe my vision for this idea, briefly go into each of these themes, and suggest how they may be combined in a novel and interesting way to give poor women an opportunity to climb out of poverty by doing well and doing good at the same time.

Give a woman a fish, feed her for a day. Teach a woman to fish, feed her and her family for a lifetime.

—Adapted from a quote in Anne Ritchie’s novel, Mrs. Dymond (1885) (Wikipedia.org)

What’s The Big Idea?

Imagine a tented wellness retreat located on the Crow Nation Native American reservation in Montana, in a village in rural India, the Andes or the Amazon, or a small town in the Bophuthatswana homeland of northern South Africa. In each place, local women are treating visiting women with herbs, oils, grains, spices, massage, song, incense, steam, dance, or other methods that they have used to keep their families healthy and nourished for generations. These “treatments,” local substitutes for “modern” health care which is typically unaffordable or unavailable, not subjected to double-blind studies, are honed for their effectiveness over time by trial and error. These treatments and diet secrets are typically passed down to younger generations, almost exclusively women, by word of mouth. The women are working on women because in many areas, especially in developing countries, it is generally not acceptable for women to touch male strangers. In this way, poor women in depressed economic areas are doing good by helping those more fortunate by sharing their ways of feeling and being better and, in the process, helping themselves do well.

Why This Initiative?

Persistent poverty among women is worst in economically depressed areas where women are discouraged or even prohibited from becoming productive members of the economy by working outside the home. By making it possible for these women to realize an economic benefit from their innate knowledge, they can help their families escape poverty, train other women in wellness methods so they can do the same, and codify these treatments for the health care community to investigate. This will then increase the health and nutrition awareness in the community, and increase the education level of the women by the training needed for them to run these businesses.

Why Now? The “Total Addressable Market” (TAM) for Wellness Tourism

Tourists looking for physiological and nutritional nirvana now have new, authentic, natural, and ethnic treatments cleansing and healing experiences to add to their travel repertoire. In an article in the April 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review titled “The Tourism Time Bomb,” the authors state:

International travel is no longer the exclusive province of the rich. Over the next several decades, hundreds of millions of new entrants to the middle class will want not only the things—but also the experiences—that money can buy . . . . As the scarcity of places grows, many companies will find opportunities to profit by meeting new levels of demand for authentic—and inauthentic—experiences . . . . A billion or two additional international travelers represent both a massive potential headache and an opportunity for business.

Local, natural, and ethnic treatments and diets are very popular among international tourists, especially women from developing countries increasingly bedeviled by stress and other modern-day ailments.

The global well-being/spa travel market is set to cross the $2 trillion mark, according to a new study, “Spas and the Global Wellness Market,” conducted by SRI International. Key SRI Study Findings include 81% of consumers are “extremely” or “very interested” in improving their personal wellness; exercising, eating better, and visiting a spa are the top 3 things consumers say they are most likely to do to improve their wellness; 82% of spa industry respondents reported changes in their business to respond to the wellness trend, and the vast majority has seen revenue growth as a result; While medical tourism ($50 billion) has generated far more discussion up to now, “wellness tourism” (consumer travel to pursue holistic, preventive, or lifestyle-based services) represents a market more than twice as large ($106 billion). The study, released at the Global Spa Summit in Istanbul in 2010, defines nine core segments of the market and three mega-trends driving growth in wellness travel. The mega-trends, according to SRI include (a) an aging world population; (b) failing conventional medical systems, with consumers, health care providers and governments seeking more cost-effective, prevention-focused alternatives to a Western medical/"sickness" model focused on solving health problems rather than preventing them; (c) increased globalization, with consumers more aware of alternative health approaches via the internet and the powerful reach of celebrity wellness advocates such as Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, and Jamie Oliver.

The SRI study reported that there are 289 million active wellness consumers in the world’s top 30 industrialized nations alone. The SRI report describes wellness as (a) multidimensional and holistic, integrating physical, mental, spiritual, and social approaches; (b) complementary and proactive, not only treating illness, but more importantly, focused on preventing sickness and improving overall quality of life; (c) consumer-driven, relying on consumer choice rather than patient necessity.

How Will It Work?

The tents help lower the cost of the facility, reduce setup time, and can be shipped to other locations when not in use. If Four Seasons can do it in northern Thailand and become the best hotel in the world (2010), this initiative too can be realized. Plus, the ability for businesses to harness the power of global supply chains to move factors of production across borders has never been easier. For seasonal locations, these tents can be shipped from say one part of Africa, when it may be low season for tourists, to another part where it might be high season. Products used could be home-made remedies (lotions, potions, salves, drinks, and other remedies used primarily in rural areas unserved by modern medicine) without making any medical claims.

How Will It Be Financed?

Localities and countries where poor women live will benefit from this economic value creation. There are only so many basket weaving projects that can be supported in any area. This service business idea represents the new generation of sustainable and low impact value creation activities for the 21st-century experience economy.

The retreat could be financed by micro-credit loan backed by local, state, and federal governments. Micro-credit experience with women entrepreneurs in places such as Bangladesh and New York City by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus has shown that women default on their loans less than men. Despite this fact, financing for small businesses is typically hard for women in economically depressed areas to obtain without collateral. The loan will be used to source a sufficient and high-quality supply of treatment ingredients and treatment tents. By not being a charity, this program helps women help themselves in a fiscally responsible way. To paraphrase Muhammad Yunus, one day in the not too distant future, millions of people will visit a poverty museum to reflect on how and why this scourge affected over a billion people.

This initiative will tap into a growing market for this economic activity, cater to target markets where this might work best, and help propagate a model to bring the necessary stakeholders (tourism, health care, women’s groups, micro-credit, funding sponsors in cash and kind) together to make this work. This learning by doing will advance the study of poverty alleviation by the building of human capital in a new and interesting way. In keeping with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, this initiative addresses several key priorities: empowering women, improving health, and reducing the economic gender disparity in a sustainable way.

What Are The Next Steps?

This initiative is grounded in a novel and interesting public–private partnership solution for a seemingly intractable problem. All that is needed to develop a “proof of concept” by finding a location donated by local governments, donors for expertise, materials, and training (e.g., Espa for wellness equipment and training, Abercrombie and Kent for tents and hospitality training, Medecins Sans Frontieres for expert advice on nontraditional cures), to build a pilot project. Targeting the poorest areas might be a good place to start.

Conclusion

The main outcome of this wellness tourism initiative is a new business aimed at empowering a key target group: women in economically depressed areas, to escape poverty by capitalizing on a skill set that they already possess and use. In keeping with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, this initiative addresses several key priorities: empowering women, improving health, and reducing the economic gender disparity in a sustainable way. To paraphrase Muhammad Yunus, one day in the not too distant future, millions of people will visit a poverty museum to reflect on how and why this scourge affected over a billion people. This transformational wellness tourism initiative will empower poor women to create value for themselves and their families and make the world a better place.