The global wellness tourism market was up 33% in 2023, year over year, and is expected to reach $1.4 trillion in 2027. Nothing can stop this train, not even a popular anthology series that depicts luxury wellness trips gone very, very wrong.
People are burnt out. They want to spend their precious PTO sleeping, sweating, decompressing. They’re searching for resorts with revamped spas, nearby trails for running or hiking, inspired menus, workout-class residencies. Broadly speaking, it’s a positive trend. But it does raise the question: how well can one actually get on a wellness weekend away? Does it start to feel forced? Would a delayed flight cast a pall over the whole experience? Can anyone really go a whole vacation day without eating French fries?
Earlier this year, I went to Miami to test the concept firsthand, over four days at W South Beach, an HQ for the 305’s beachfront party scene that’s long hosted NFL players and Victoria’s Secret models. These days, the poolside music’s still thumping, but they’re turning it down a little earlier. The resort has embraced health-focused hospitality and capitalized on Miami’s wellness boom, in particular, as the city has slowly become an underrated fitness capital of America.
So: can you actually get fitter on the grounds of a resort? Can you reset your nervous system in a weekend? Here’s what’s on offer at the distinctly 2025 iteration of W South Beach — and how I felt when it was time to head back to the airport.
Welcome to W South Beach
I arrived at W South Beach on a Thursday morning in early February, following a brief flight from LaGuardia. A polar vortex was imminent in New York City — the ground crew was literally scrubbing ice off the plane before departure — but Miami was a different story entirely: 77 degrees, zero clouds, windows thrown wide to competing radios on the MacArthur Causeway.
The preposterous temperature change made it easy to shake off workweek stress; but I soon had some extra help. Within two hours of checking in, I reported for a “detoxifying and energizing massage” at the hotel’s nearly 9,000-square-foot Away Spa. Muds of unknown origin were spread across my low back. My massage therapist focused on key areas, like my left rotator cuff, which has been bothering me since last fall, but also kneaded out spots I don’t think too much about, down to the dorsal muscles of my oft-sore runner’s feet.
When the pandemic hit, W South Beach took the forced pause to reconsider its offerings and mission. Founded in 2009 as an upper-echelon resort in Marriott’s catalog, it spent much of the 2010s partying. But a $30 million renovation in the fall of 2020 signaled a shift from its irascible adolescence to a lower-key, more sustainable future. There are still cabanas for bachelorette benders and cheeky art installations in the lobby; but there are also a lot of small children waddling around with floaties on their arms and couples pairing their poolside reading with power smoothies.
As Diego Dantas, the hotel’s account director, explained to me while we walked around the property, W South Beach is leveraging its new amenities — and attitude — to create bespoke wellness programming for its guests. We walked past the property’s signature pools, took a peek at the Atlantic Ocean (it’s just across a pedestrian lane) and visited the rooftop basketball, tennis and pickleball courts. It’s the only resort in South Beach that has all three. On any given day there are classes for the purpose of fitness (Dogpound, Ahana Yoga), leisure (pickleball clinics) and community (mixology workshops, cigar tastings). The last one might not sound too healthy, but people are still on vacation. The hotel hasn’t forgotten that fact.
It’s an uneasy truce, in theory, an erstwhile rave-resort rebranding in the spirit of good decision-making. But W South Beach has adopted enough tenets of the conventional, Canyon Ranch-esque wellness retreat, without going fully monastic. They’re not limiting portion sizes, for instance. They’re just extending the metaphorical menu. Less metaphorically: My first night at the Grove, the resort’s New American restaurant, I had seared cod, a cocktail stuffed with $8 of blueberries and a truly amazing plate of Brussels sprouts. Salty, crunchy, soft at the center. Maybe it is possible to skip fries on vacation.
Miami the Wellness Capital
Read the room — or that’s to say, the region — and it’s clear Miami’s priorities have evolved. Post-pandemic, the city has embraced its healthy-living potential and is emerging as one of America’s top wellness capitals alongside New York and Los Angeles.
Consider: Miami has over 500 miles of coastline; the weather’s a dream (minus a humid, hurricane-threatening corridor in late summer); the city touts excellent access to fresh produce and boasts a thriving farmer’s market scene; and the Miami Marathon just sold out for the fourth year in a row. Meanwhile, Miami Beach is home to one of the most anticipated HYROX races of the year, events like F1 Miami Grand Prix and the Miami Open (tennis) keep big names around town; and the city’s deep ties to Latin America mean that trends that take off here have a chance of taking off in a number of countries. (The reverse is also true. Founded in Mexico, Padel is huge in Miami right now.)
A New Racket Sport Is Taking Over the Country. You Can Thank This Man.
How Padel Haus founder Santiago Gomez got America to fall for his childhood pastimeLittle wonder Miami’s attracted significant wellness industry investment and scores of fitness influencers. Some current movers and shakers include Anatomy, a massive, community-focused gym concept (lo and behold, it was started by nightlife veterans); The Well, which is opening all-inclusive luxury wellness residences (it’s basically a vertical wellness village); the design center for Skelcore, a rapidly growing gym equipment vendor; and DBC Fitness, a sports performance facility in the Design District that analyzes members’ biomechanics.
Also of note: Barry’s Bootcamp moved its corporate headquarters to Miami in 2021, while the city has exported its love of DJs and dance to cities around the country with popular dance-cardio concept 305 Fitness.
Many of these developments reflect trends across the celebrity-sphere. Miami-Dade County has some of the glitziest zip codes in the country; you could argue that the city is just accommodating trickle-down TikTok trends. But Miami’s ClassPass data seems to suggest widespread consumer appreciation for this health kick. The city may be experiencing a changing of the guard — but it’s one with robust approval.
Train, Fuel, Recover, Live
I have a segment in my wellness newsletter, The Charge, called “Train, Fuel, Recover, Live,” where I provide a challenge or suggestion tailored to each category for the week ahead. The idea being that wellness thrives on a multi-pillar approach.
I think a simple way to tell if a wellness weekend “worked” or not is whether it honored each of those pillars, at some point in the trip. W South Beach passed with flying colors. Here are some highlights I experienced in each category:
- Train: I attended a Dogpound high-intensity session on the roof deck. The hotel hosts the NYC-based workout class (famously a favorite of Taylor Swift, Tom Holland, et al.) multiple times a week. Lots of squats. Woof.
- Fuel: I started each day with a breakfast burrito and a side of fresh fruit from the Grove. I think I could’ve eaten that thing every day for the rest of my life. As an afternoon snack, I was fond of the pool menu’s PB&J smoothie — and not just because I am a child. It was a mood-upping, muscle-building boost.
- Recover: My aforementioned sojourn to the Away Spa fits here. And also a morning with Ahana Yoga, voted the best yoga studio in Miami twice over. They maintain a residency at W South Beach, and held a restorative morning session while I was there — right on the beach. We worked into some nice stretches, and at the end, with the ocean lapping a few feet away, a couple people in the class were so relaxed they fell asleep.
- Live: Nothing gets me out of my head quite like racket sports. The flow state isn’t hard to find when you’re running around, making plays. W South Beach’s pickleball clinic, headed by Federico Pintaluba, a former professional tennis player, was a delight. I knew he was special even before I stumbled into photos of him with Roger Federer (tennis legend) and Bill Gates (pickleball legend).
Wellness weekends can’t overhaul your life — and even if they could, sheesh, that’d be a lot of pressure. But they can definitely give you a much-deserved break from your day-to-day, and ultimately inspire you to tinker with that day-to-day, once your trip is through. The right trip pays memory dividends. It sneaks into your routine in meaningful ways, prompting you to try new things, to move more, to live a little more fully.
W South Beach still has the energy and Miami hasn’t slowed down — it’s just found a new way to sweat.
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