In Grand Cayman, a 16,000-sq-ft (1,486 sq m) wellness destination called Meraki Wellness is opening this spring. In St Barth, Le Barthélemy Hotel now offers biological age testing paired with seaside mindfulness sessions. In Switzerland, luxury longevity clinic Clinique La Prairie debuted a program called “Life Reset”, built around mental longevity, combining diagnostics with personalised nutrition, neurostimulation, sleep optimisation and stress-resilience therapies.

But the longevity business isn’t confined to standalone clinics. It is increasingly becoming embedded in luxury hospitality, where hotels are positioning wellness protocols as a core part of the travel experience. At the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, a new $1,000 (£732) medical-grade recovery protocol called Flight Check addresses the physiological toll of air travel.

Flight Check was developed in partnership with Immortelle Integrative Health, a husband-and-wife-founded company that specialises in precision medicine. The 60-minute, $1,000 protocol includes IV therapy, laser-based immune fortification, light therapy that targets brain function and thermotherapy for circulation and tissue repair. For guests seeking more, add-ons include genetic analysis, gut health testing and stem cell therapy.

Evan Pinchuk, CEO and co-founder of Immortelle, says the programme grew out of nearly six years of observing hotel guests arriving in physiological distress: 90% of customers who stay at the hotel come by plane, he points out. The company now operates with about 30 nurses on site, and Flight Check appointments – limited to two per day – require 24-hour advance booking. 

Jessica Jacobson, Immortelle co-founder and director of patient care, says flight recovery often evolves into a broader conversation about longevity, noting that there are similarities between people arriving on flights and people recovering from surgery. “Flying creates this perfect storm of immune suppression that people don’t know they have to recover from,” she says.

What the evidence says

Deborah Kado, professor of medicine and research chief of geriatric medicine at Stanford Medicine, is cautious about equating data with outcomes. “Many of these wellness biomarkers may provide the client with useful information that can be used to perhaps improve their health,” she says. “The key word there is ‘perhaps’,” she emphasised, “depending on which measure is being discussed”.

For some of these commercialised interventions – like red light therapy, contrast therapy, infrared saunas and cold plunges – the evidence is thin. To assume an intervention in animals will also apply to human longevity is exactly that – an assumption, and “not based upon evidence that human life is prolonged,” Kado emphasized.

Andrea LaCroix, professor at UC San Diego’s Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, is equally direct. “There’s an absence of clinical trial data showing that any interventions extend healthy longevity in humans,” she said. “These treatments should be seen as self-experimentation at your own risk.”

Following the money

The price of entry varies widely, from $200 (£146) for a wellness screening to $1,300 (£951) for a 45-minute “cellular repair” session, and comprehensive annual programmes can cost several thousand dollars. No matter the structure, these offerings share a central pitch, either explicitly or implicitly, that advanced diagnostics and targeted interventions can help people live not just longer, but better.

The question is whether science supports the price tags, and Michael Doney, executive medical director of Biograph, draws a clear distinction between what he calls true diagnostic clinics and the broader wellness category. “There’s a meaningful difference between wellness clubs, med-tech spas and true diagnostic clinics,” he says, adding that at Biograph, longevity refers to extending healthspan and lifespan by “identifying and addressing risk early, often years before symptoms appear.”

One in six of Biograph’s members uncover urgent or potentially life-threatening findings, Doney says, adding, “the real differentiator is how all of this data is interpreted together”. He pointed out that in the traditional healthcare system, testing is often scattershot and obtained over many days, weeks or months.