Athens
Madeleine
In her element planning active itineraries — mountain landscapes, hiking, and trips that keep you moving.
Most people come back from vacation needing a vacation. That’s a planning problem, not an inevitability.
Wellness travel isn’t only silent retreats and green juice. It covers anything built around feeling better at the end than you did at the start — a spa week, a walking trip through Tuscany, a river cruise with bicycles on deck, or a resort where the food actually agrees with you.
The useful question is which kind suits you. Some people restore by doing nothing; others by moving all day. Booking the wrong one is how you end up restless on a lounger or exhausted on a hiking trip.
Three ways to do it
What kind of reset are you after?
Most trips lean one way. The good ones leave room for the other two.
Mindful escapes
Quiet, and on purpose
Guided meditation, yoga, and settings that do half the work themselves — Sedona’s red rock, a private villa, or a ship with a wellbeing program built into the sailing. For people who need the noise turned down.
Soothing sanctuaries
Spa-led, properly done
Destination spas where the treatments are the itinerary rather than an add-on. Thermal waters, Nordic saunas and snow grottos at sea, and resorts built around a spa instead of the other way round.
Active retreats
Move all day, sleep well
Walking tours graded easy to hard, cycling trips, river cruises that hand you a bike at every port, and fitness programs at sea. Restorative because you’ve used your body, not because you haven’t.
Where it works well
Places built for this
Costa Rica
Rainforest air, natural hot springs, and a national habit of eating well. A quarter of the country is protected land, which you feel.
Italy
Thermal baths the Romans were using two thousand years ago, plus spa towns and retreats in some of the best-looking country in Europe.
Thailand
Traditional massage, meditation centers, and yoga retreats — a wellness tradition rather than a wellness industry.
California
Coast, desert, and national parks, with destination spas that have been at this longer than most. Close enough for a long weekend.
At sea
Several lines now build wellness into the voyage — spa suites with unlimited access, mindful living programs, and complimentary bikes ashore.
Closer to home
Sedona, the Berkshires, Boca Raton. Sometimes the point is arriving in a few hours rather than a few flights.
Who you’ll work with
Pick the office nearest you.
All four of our advisors plan wellness travel. Which one you work with is usually just a question of which office you’d rather walk into.
Dunwoody
Leslie
Planning travel since 1990, deepest in Italy, Greece, France, and Ireland — which is where a good many of the thermal springs are.
Dunwoody
Steve
A former chiropractor who left to travel the world, so he thinks about how a trip treats your body. A sunrise hike in Sri Lanka is his idea of a good morning.
Tuscaloosa
Stella
She builds trips around slowing down — markets, long meals, and the streets past the checklist. Which is its own kind of wellness.
Go deeper
More on wellness travel
Destination spas, wellness sailings, and retreats near and far — kept up to date through our relationships with colleagues around the world.
Ready when you are.
Tell us what you need a break from, and we’ll work out what kind of trip actually fixes it.
