This year, a key emphasis at the Global Wellness Summit was on the Wellness Communities Initiative, spearheaded by Mia Kyricos, who is also founder of strategic advisory firm Kyricos & Associates.

The GWI estimated wellness real estate to be a US$118.6bn (€107bn, £95bn) sector in 2015, a 19 per cent growth since 2013, and communities are cropping up worldwide – from the 10 Healthy New Towns proposed in the UK, to Serenbe in the US, Worldcare Wellness Village in Dubai and Avira Living in Wellness in Malaysia.

“We have evolved our conversations from places we would like to visit, to places we may now work, play, heal, learn – and ultimately live,” said Kyricos.

The initiative has just published a white paper to address critical issues surrounding the fast-growing sector. And the industry should expect to hear much more about wellness communities in the year ahead, as it was revealed that the 2017 Summit’s main body of research, to be released at next year’s Global Wellness Summit, will delve deeper into the wellness real estate sector.

“There’s a big shift in the growth of wellness communities, but they’re not evenly distributed around the world, and there are many different drivers and value systems for them," said Ophelia Yeung, GWI’s senior research fellow, who will be co-authoring the report. "Our agenda is to home in on a definition [of wellness communities] and to look at different consumer needs, drivers and opportunities to help inform a framework for investor and developer discussions. We also want to dig deeper into best practice examples of such developments and the financial returns which can be expected for owners and operators.”