Women-Led Companies Shaping the Future of Wellness Travel: Transformative, Community-Focused Experiences

And that’s not the only change afoot. Wellness travel in 2026 is also increasingly incorporating a broader range of activities, from a heightened focus on connecting with nature to cultural engagement and learning. Along with all that, the women creating these trips are increasingly making a point of supporting locally owned and women-owned businesses in the destinations where the retreats or wellness activities take place.

“In 2026, the concept of wellness has evolved into a very broad and sophisticated umbrella,” says Chelsea Ross, founder of Goddess Retreats, which offers women-only wellness programs in Bali. “It’s no longer just a singular pursuit, but an integration of physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Today, women are moving away from the idea of a holiday as a simple indulgence or a temporary escape. Instead, they are seeking a deeper form of travel that is truly restorative, but one that offers real, practical tools to enrich their lives long after they return home.”

Translation: This is an especially exciting time to be contemplating a wellness getaway for your travel to-do list.

With all of this in mind, we spoke with five of the women-owned travel and wellness retreat companies featured in JourneyWoman’s Women’s Travel Directory tto find out more about how this style of travel has changed and what’s new and exciting for 2026.

The evolution of wellness travel

When Jools Sampson founded the UK-based company Reclaim Yourself in the mid-2000s and began offering wellness trips and restorative yoga retreats, there were very few other companies doing the same thing. “Most were simply yoga teachers taking their own students away,” begins Sampson, pointing out that retreats as a form of travel weren’t even widely understood at that point.

“I often had to explain what they were,” adds Sampson, whose company began with a mission of offering small-group wellbeing journeys in extraordinary places. Initially, that meant mainly yoga trips, but over time, Reclaim Yourself retreats became far more experiential, pioneering a model of travel that combined wellbeing with culture, nature and responsible tourism.

Similarly, when Ross of Goddess Retreats entered the business in 2003, she says wellness travel looked very different. It was split into two distinct camps. “You went to a spa for your body and an ashram for your soul,” says Ross.

“Back then, if a woman wanted to step away from her daily life, she generally had to choose between two extremes that rarely spoke to one another,” Ross explains. “On one side were the high-end luxury spas. These were beautiful, co-ed spaces focused almost entirely on the physical body and spa luxury. While they were lovely, they often lacked a deeper communal soul or a focus on the specific emotional needs of women.”

At the other end of the spectrum were hardcore spiritual retreats, which often featured silent meditation programs, strict fasting, or ashrams affiliated with religious or spiritual groups. “You might find yourself sleeping on a thin mattress in a monastic-style room or camping on a remote sprawling property,” adds Ross.