let’s get more on wellness tourism with travel expert mark murphy mark thanks for joining us good to see you again you too so this notion of wellness tourism I mean it’s evolved well beyond the idea of going to the spa or a health farm right how would you define it now well it’s hard to define because you know what the way they looked at it before was you’d go to Canyon Ranch and you would get some treatments and you would relax and you would eat healthy food and that was the experience well those organizations as well as literally everybody out there is getting in on the game so for instance a good way to describe it is where you can marry adrenaline right then right it’s a great description because you can take a wellness trip that has adventure travel elements you can go surfing you can go skydiving you can get that adrenaline rush but then you come back and you get that pampering edge as well and that’s
why it’s very difficult to find because you can have one piece of the run aside plus the adventure but what about the component of a spiritual development if you will something for the soul which sort of works into the whole idea of yoga and the Indian troops yes yes so so you have that or you can go down to Mexico and do I think it’s called to Moscow where you sit in a igloo like structure and you have a shaman that chance and the steam and everything else and you’re supposed to connect with this spirituality and so that experience again it’s about immersing yourself in that experience and having something that is so unique but that heals you on the inside and spiritually not just physically which a lot of the places will do that as well so very looking at spiritual enlightenment physical betterment we’ve also got the component of adrenaline and adventure this sounds like it’s a very complicated package Torgon dies not something you’re gonna get on hotels.com is this leading to the comeback of travel agents interesting you say that yes travel agents really never went away because they have sold seven to have dwindled drastically right so right so what ended up happening was a lot of travel agents move their business home so their personal concierge a lot of them deal in this type of more it where it’s complicated trips luxury travel and they take care of the customer from start to finish and they put together all of those components what’s great about traveling is they deal with the suppliers and they sell thousands and thousands millions and tens of millions of consumers so they get the feedback from them and they can match you at the right product so number one are they back yeah in a big way the revenues have doubled since the trial of and the financial crisis doubled coming out of the financial crisis they were the fastest growing segment of travel distribution which blows people’s minds because everyone’s thinking online online online you’ll notice that if you look at the numbers from the various OTAs or online travel agencies the vast majority of the profits come from a single source hotels margin is there they’re very fragmented in terms of a distribution they don’t get the high yield or complicated bookings at those websites because they’re just not the type of trip you can actually book yourself online so you nailed it on the head you’re right on it you do need that expertise now this this is a growing industry are billion dollar industry