Wellness booms in Asia Pac: Wellness trips now represent 6.5% of all tourism trips taken worldwide, growing 15.3% annually from 2015-2017 to reach 830 million trips each year. Not surprisingly, Asia Pacific now ranks second – at 258 million wellness trips annually — just behind Europe. It is also the fastest-growing wellness tourism market as wellness trips jumped 33% in the last two years (China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia generated more than 20% in annual gains) and the market will essentially double from 2017–2022: from US$137 billion to US$252 billion. CatchOn has collaborated with the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) to produce Asia: The Future of Global Wellness Tourism and identified three main consumer archetypes who will drive the future of wellness tourism in Asia.—Jeff Weinstein
Rising tides: Curbed.com takes an, er, deep dive into one of the long-term realities of climate change: how hotels and resorts are addressing the increasing risks, insurance and otherwise, that come with extreme weather events and flooding – and the effect on hundreds of billions of dollars of coastal real estate.—Barbara Bohn
Notre Dame for the next few centuries: From the ashes of a historic tragedy, one Parisian architect has a plan to rebuild the beloved cathedral – but this time, the Gothic icon would become an energy generator, complete with an enormous rooftop garden, and a metaphor for modern religion, writes Dezeen.com. “This powerful fire has awakened our dystopian imagination and somewhat echoed the church’s current identity crisis, as well as the environmental challenges we are facing through climate change,” said Vincent Callebaut Architectures. So wonderfully French.—B.B.