Opening Remarks by MOS Alvin Tan at the Wellness Symposium 2022

Introduction

1. Happy Friday everyone! Thank you all for coming.

2. I was here at Gardens by the Bay a month ago at the media preview for the inaugural Wellness Festival Singapore.

3. For those who joined us there, you would remember that we had an impromptu taiqi session with our Wushu Champion Lee Tze Yuan and Olympian Dipna Lim Prasad – which was refreshingly calming.

4. I thought that was a good start to what we are trying to achieve here at the Wellness Symposium.

Rising prominence of wellness

5. The past two years have been very challenging. We realised that wellness is something that we have inevitably taken for granted, but COVID reminded us that life is beyond work and our careers.

6. We learned that in the process of social distancing and mask-wearing, people’s physical, mental and emotional well-being were being affected.

7. Hopefully with the pandemic waning – although we still have to be very mindful of the different variants, particularly as the golden months come – we do not forget the importance of physical, mental and emotional wellness.

Emerging opportunities in wellness industry

Opportunities for tourism

8. Wellness is an emerging sector which presents many opportunities for our tourism sector and Singapore is very well-positioned to capture these opportunities. Why? Because we have a wide variety of accessible, innovative, and “must-do” wellness experiences.

9. Just go our Sensorium and you will see that we are constantly innovating and creating new experiences for the local, regional and global markets.

10. This will help us achieve our ambition of becoming an urban wellness haven in the region.

11. Singapore’s wellness players can also drive further demand by forging different creative partnerships with our tourism sector to develop unique, high-quality experiences and products to drive wellness as a key part of tourism.

Opportunities beyond tourism

12. There are also opportunities beyond tourism.

13. Wellness has a huge potential as an industry by itself.

14. According to Global Wellness Institute (GWI), the global wellness economy stood at about US$4.4 trillion in 2020. In the Asia-Pacific region, it is at US$1.5 trillion. In Singapore, it is at US$12 billion in 2020.

o The wellness economy covers a wide range of sectors including Beauty, Care, Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Spas.

15. To capitalise on this huge potential, we hope to see many more exciting, wellness-related offerings being developed.

o   The Wellness Sensorium here at the Meadow in Gardens by the Bay, is a good example of a new and innovative wellness offering.

o   It is a multi-sensory pop-up with six zones of innovative and instagrammable wellness installations.

Partner and collaborate to co-create the future of wellness

16. Many of you here today are business leaders in the wellness space. I hope you find today’s Wellness Symposium and Roundtable helpful as you come up with different creative ideas for our wellness industry here in Singapore.

17. This Inaugural Wellness Festival Singapore is just the start of our wellness journey. Beyond the wellness industry, let’s think how we can work across sectors.

o E.g. with tech companies, to co-create innovative wellness solutions to meet growing consumer demand.

18. Thank you for your time. We hope to make this regular, and welcome your energy, ideas to make this a true wellness haven for Singapore and for the world.

19. Thank you.