After taking a much larger hit during the pandemic than overall consumer spending, personal care and beauty spending is expected to grow at an annual rate of 8.1 percent until 2025, says new research on the global wellness industry presented by Global Wellness Institute and Access Corporate Group.

The study, which focused on areas such as personal care and beauty, wellness tourism, traditional and complementary medicine and spas, defined the personal care and beauty sector as “consumer spending on products and services for personal hygiene and appearance, encompassing the care of body, face, skin, hair, and nails.” 

Key findings from the personal care and beauty sector research include:

• Asia-Pacific’s rise in rank: This region moved from being the third- to first-ranked region because consumer spending on personal care and beauty shrank less in Asia than in other regions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• North America spends the most: On a per capita basis, North American consumers by far spend the most on personal care and beauty, with a per capita expenditure that’s more than double the second ranked region (Europe).

• The pandemic has prompted lifestyle changes: The concepts of self-care, prevention, and healthy lifestyles have gained wider consumer awareness during the pandemic. Within the realm of personal care and beauty, there is a deepening understanding that our external appearance is connected to our general state of health. Even as consumer spending on personal care and beauty shrank overall in 2020, skincare as a subcategory was more resilient than other segments like cosmetics and fragrances.

• A holistic approach is gaining momentum: While consumer spending on personal care and beauty is expected to bounce back post-pandemic (with a projected 8.1% annual growth rate from 2020-2025), there will continue to be a rising tension between external and artificial “quick fixes” for beauty versus a holistic, inside-out notion of a healthy appearance.

• Self care is essential: The pandemic experience has reframed self-care as being essential for our physical and mental health. This reframing of self-care through a mental wellness lens will create many new opportunities for the wellness tourism, spa, and thermal/mineral springs sectors 

• Medical-type offerings are on the rise: The pandemic has accelerated the incorporation of medical-type offerings by more spas and wellness businesses that hope to capture new markets. Target markets include consumers who have a newfound urgency to address chronic disease, boost immunity, and adopt strategies for a drastic lifestyle change; patients recovering from COVID or who are afflicted with long COVID; and people seeking healing from the emotional and mental trauma of COVID. Immunotherapy, IV drips, gut microbiome, sleep analysis, oxygen therapy, and the like are increasingly showing up on the menus of all types of spas.

“I’ve always been a big advocate of health and beauty combined, as inner health is the driving force for healthy skin, hair, nails and more importantly, our immune system,” says Dr. Azza Halim, a multi-specialist physician. “The pandemic has definitely raised health awareness as more and more individuals became more cognizant of the impact of lifestyle, immune support and nutrition in relation to preventing disease, illness and chronic conditions, which is a good thing as we’re seeing more patients seeking not just aesthetic treatments but also a functional medicine approach.”

Read the full report—"The Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond COVID"—here.