DAYSPA blogs from the 8th Annual Global Spa & Wellness Summit in Morocco: Day 1 concludes

After a busy first morning at the GSWS, delegates participated in an interactive lunch, featuring roundtable discussions. Tables spilling out of the restaurant and around the pool each focused on one of 64 topics with a host expert, allowing delegates to engage in deeper discussions and network with others on topics of personal interest, such as “Global Wellness Day” (June 30, 2105) with Belgin Aksoy, creative director of Richmond Nua Wellness Spa in Turkey, “Future of Technology in Spa & Wellness” with Josh McCarter of Booker, and “Mindfulness and Nourishment” with Felix Lopez.

Next, the delegation convened for a panel entitled “The Spa and Wellness Scene in Africa,” moderated by Magatte Wade and featuring Dzigbordi Dosoo of Allure Africa, Elaine Okeke-Martin from the Spa & Wellness Association of Africa, Saida el Idrissi of the Moroccan Spa Association and Denzil Phillips representing African Medicinal Plant Standards. The panelists discussed misconceptions and realities about the current African marketplace, beginning with Dosoo, who clarified that Africa is a continent, not a country. The rest of the world tends to consider Africa in one breath, but it is a huge and diverse area. For instance, West Africa alone is made up of 16 nations and 350 million people; the current Ebola scare has hit five of these nations, but 11 have reported no cases and it’s business as usual as far as they’re concerned. All panelists recognize the need for “sustainable conscious capitalism,” as well as the need for processes and standards in all facets of business. They acknowledge that China and India have made such progress because they have more cohesive standards and training. Okeke-Martin remarked that local therapists are available, but turnover rates are high at 25% because there’s no career-planning path, or sufficient education. Additionally, the lack of sophistication with branding and packaging of local indigenous products has hampered spa industry growth. Phillips has lived in Africa for 20 years, yet as a non-native is conscious of the images the world has of Africa; aid agencies showing pictures of starving children because that’s how they drive funding, but that doesn’t represent the whole continent. All agreed that Africa needs to be more proactive about marketing authentic remedies, foods and rituals, rather than just offering clients something they already know.

Next up was a blast from the past: a 1979 video segment from 60 Minutes on the topic of “Wellness.” In the segment, Dan Rather explores the definition of wellness, and interviews Dr. John Travis, the creator of the wellness paradigm. Dr. Travis shared that back then, he had to spell the word “wellness” for people! It makes us realize that what seems like a “sudden” shoot to stardom for the wellness concept has been anything but.

We were then treated to a keynote interview of Dr. Travis, along with Dr. Don Ardell, Travis’s collaborator and author of the seminal book “High Level Wellness,” and his recently published “Wellness Orgasms: The Fun Way to Live Well and Die Healthy” (co-authored by Grant Donovan). Peter Greenberg led a discussion with these wellness pioneers about their journey over the last 30+ years and the evolution of wellness. Both Ardell and Travis felt strongly that the medical establishment wasn’t giving the right advice to patients, who were seeking easy cures for problems that were in many cases self-created, and talked about the fact that insurance did not cover preventive care. Ardell says that “wellness” is a difficult word to define; he adds the modifier “REAL (real, exuberance, athletic and liberty) and suggests that spas come up with a similar strategy to connect consumers to the end result; he also comments that spas are the “best hope for rapid, fast-forward advance of the wellness concept.” These important sages were then recognized by the Global Spa & Wellness Summit with the first-ever Wellness Innovation award, in honor of their groundbreaking and tireless efforts.

Day 1’s conference schedule concluded with six concurrent breakout forums, on the topics of Wellness Tourism, Hot Springs, Corporate Wellness, Destination Spa & Wellness Retreats, Spa Education and Hotel Wellness & Spa. Detailed information on these 90-minute forums with prominent segment leaders will be available shortly on the GSWS site.

For the evening, delegates were assigned to one of four groups who were bussed to different restaurants in the Marrakech medina (old walled part of city) for a regional meal, which concluded with performances by belly dancers and fire artists.