Bath has been in the hot springs business for roughly two thousand years, which gives it a certain quiet confidence whenever “wellness tourism” gets rediscovered as a trend. But the numbers coming out of the global travel industry this year are worth Bath’s attention regardless. As revealed by the latest market study from DataIntelo, the worldwide hot spring tourism market will be worth USD 23.7 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to USD 44.4 billion in 2033 – registering an average annual growth rate of 7.4%. This isn’t just another quirky factoid. It’s a structural change in how people travel and its relevance is very obvious for a UNESCO World Heritage site that revolves around a natural hot spring.

The numbers behind the boom

Doubling in less than a decade is not an insignificant growth pattern for any niche within tourism, and the factors that contribute to it go beyond a fleeting craze for wellness. The factors include increased need for restorative and experiential tourism rather than traditional sightseeing, increased accessibility due to budget airlines and OTAs, and consistent government support for wellness tourism in places with geothermal resources.

In regional terms, Asia Pacific dominates again – according to the report, the region will earn USD 10.6 billion in 2024, which amounts to almost 45% of the total global revenue, due to Japan’s onsen tradition and high levels of domestic demand from China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Europe follows with a industry share of USD 6.7 billion, thanks to those very historic spa cities Bath is part of: Hungary, Iceland, and Italy have been singled out as countries that manage to convert their long-standing thermal tradition into tourist dollars. North America’s share is only USD 4.2 billion, but it is growing constantly.

One of the aspects that stands out about Bath is the level of detail in its segments. According to the report, well-being and spa facilities represent a high-margin sector in terms of the local market, while the largest share of the turnover is taken up by accommodation, namely, hotels, resorts and boutique lodgings with the focus on well-being. To put it differently, it is not only the income generated by the springs, but the income generated by the hospitality industry associated with them. Additionally, tour packages offering accommodation, treatment and excursions are becoming increasingly popular among foreign tourists and newcomers, which is consistent with the type of two-or-three-day tourist that Bath attracts from abroad.

Why this matters specifically for Bath

Bath’s position is unusual, and worth spelling out. It’s one of only a handful of European cities where natural thermal water is genuinely, historically the reason the settlement exists. The Romans built baths on the same springs that still supply Thermae Bath Spa today, and the city’s spa heritage was central to its 2021 inscription alongside Baden-Baden, Vichy and others — as part of the UNESCO “Great Spa Towns of Europe” World Heritage Site. That’s not marketing language; it’s an internationally recognised designation that puts Bath in direct company with the very destinations the Dataintelo report singles out as driving Europe’s share of the market.

The report even names a Bath operator directly in its competitor landscape: Bath Thermae Spa appears alongside Blue Lagoon in Iceland, Hoshino Resorts in Japan and Gellért Thermal Bath in Hungary as one of the recognised players in the global hot spring tourism industry. For a British inland city with no coastline and no obvious “spa capital” branding in the way Baden-Baden or Karlovy Vary might claim, that’s a meaningful signal  Bath is already on the map that the rest of this growing market is being measured against.

Who’s actually driving the demand

The age-group breakdown in the research is arguably the most useful piece of market intelligence for anyone in Bath’s hospitality or attractions sector planning ahead. Millennials are identified as the largest driver of demand, prioritising authenticity, sustainability and digital convenience the group most likely to discover a destination through social media and book it without ever speaking to a person. Generation X, often travelling with family, favour bundled packages that combine wellness with recreation and culture, which is precisely the kind of itinerary Bath’s mix of Roman history, spa treatments and independent food and retail scene can offer without much reinvention. Baby boomers, meanwhile, are flagged as a high-spend segment with longer stays and a genuine focus on therapeutic benefit rather than novelty good news for a destination whose core spa product is grounded in centuries of real therapeutic use rather than a manufactured wellness gimmick.

That spread across generations matters more than it might first appear. A market driven by a single demographic is vulnerable to that group’s changing tastes; a market with genuine multi-generational appeal as this one is shown to be gives destinations like Bath more than one lever to pull in marketing and product development.

The regulatory and sustainability backdrop

It would be a mistake to read all of this as unambiguous good news with no caveats. The same research flags environmental sustainability as the most significant restraining factor on the market’s growth: overexploitation of geothermal resources, inadequate waste management and unregulated development are named as real threats to the long-term viability of hot spring destinations, alongside tightening zoning and water-usage regulation in some markets. For Bath, where the spring itself is a finite, closely monitored natural resource sitting beneath a World Heritage city with strict planning controls, this is not an abstract industry concern it’s a live local one. It will certainly be necessary for any development in the spa-wellness product for Bath to coexist with the preservation requirements associated with the status of UNESCO, and businesses which can prove environmental responsibility are bound to have the upper hand as attention turns to the industry.

The positive aspects mentioned in the report include increasing private-public investment in infrastructure and education about the health effects of thermal water, which certainly align with the approach taken by Bath tourism boards in their discussions of the heritage and well-being aspects of the destination.

What this means in practice

For a city whose core tourism draw already blends Roman heritage, Georgian architecture and a working thermal spa, three things stand out from this data:

• The wellness angle is not a side story to Bath’s history — it’s the fastest-growing part of the global market it competes in. Positioning the spa experience as central to a Bath visit, rather than an add-on to the Roman Baths museum trip, matches where global demand is actually heading.
• There is potential for package-type services, which combine generations. Since Generation X and baby boomers have proven interest in wellness-culture packages, there is certainly an opportunity for the locals to provide such packages instead of forcing travelers to create their own plans.
• Digital discovery and direct booking will matter more, not less. With millennials driving demand and OTAs already dominant as a booking channel globally, Bath’s smaller independent spa and wellness operators not just the larger, established names  stand to benefit from investing in their own online presence rather than relying solely on general city marketing.

None of this changes what Bath is. It changes how much attention the rest of the world’s wellness travellers are likely to be paying to what Bath already has.

Reference: https://dataintelo.com/report/hot-spring-tourism-market