Global Wellness Day for Success.
Join Global Wellness Day and the entire world’s shared dream of living well.
Ever since Global Wellness Day was celebrated for the first time in 2012, the Spas I worked in participated in raising awareness about living a well life. From the early beginnings, I felt it was our role, the role of the Spa & Wellness industry, to support this unique movement. I loved sharing with our employees, guests, and local communities about living well and increasing each person’s motivation to do so, not just for today but for all 365 days of the year.
Having participated actively and in creative ways in this celebration each year with my teams, it was an enormous honor to become an official Global Wellness Day Ambassador earlier this year.
Some of you may know Global Wellness Day (GWD) and have participated in this annual celebration with your teams. That's fantastic, and I am sure you keep valuable memories from this second Saturday in June over the last years. However, I also know that there are many Spas out there who have not heard yet of this wonderful movement or don't know how to participate.
What do you need to know about GWD? It is a global movement without commercial purposes. Therefore, the Spas or brands supporting GWD cannot aim for any commercial profit. GWD provides a guide with Branding and Visual Identity Guideline. These guidelines help you while you support and celebrate GWD in your operation. The first step by a Spa to support GWD is taken within the brand itself. Tell your entire team that you support GWD and share your support with your guests and social media followers.
What I have always liked about GWD has been the creative freedom on how to celebrate GWD. Not one year looked or felt the same. Not one location where I worked did celebrate GWD the same way. Though the key components were the same:
Offer a ‘well’ activity to your team - Spa, and Hotel
Invite your guests to participate in the celebration
Share the message of living a well life with your local community
In Philadelphia, our People & Culture team was very committed to supporting the celebration for our employees. Not only do we focus on nutritious meals in our staff cafeteria, but we also created a wellness room one year. We offered our team complimentary experiences, also available in the Spa. Employees could experience, for example, a percussion therapy device or benefit from LED light therapy. Also, collagen hand or foot treatments were available.
While I was in Marrakech, we had a full schedule with complimentary activities like yoga, learning self-massage, and various fitness classes. And one agenda point was the tour of our aromatic garden in the resort with our Executive Chef. That was such a success! The scheduled 30' tour ended two hours late as our guests became so fascinated by what our Chef had to share about each herb and its benefit for our bodies. This moment reminded me how important it was to include other departments in the celebration of GWD.
My most beautiful memories of sharing about Wellness with a local community go back to my time in the Seychelles. We went with the community outreach committee to the local elementary school. We took lots of apples, water, and our yoga teacher and talked to the children about Wellness. The sparkle and curiosity in their eyes and their eager participation in some yoga moves were so touching.
There are so many more memories from the last ten years that I experienced in my Spas or witnessed in the Spas of my colleagues and friends—hearing what others do or have done always inspired me even more for my operation.
I have deep gratitude to and am in admiration of Belgin Aksoy, who had this vision ten years ago that it was long overdue to celebrate Wellness one day in the year. So today, it is my esteemed privilege to help spread the awareness of living well around the world. If you would like to join this movement this year or in the future but have questions, please do reach out, and let's start the conversation!
If you have celebrated Global Wellness Day this year or in previous years, share your memories with us so that others can get inspired to join this celebration!