Few wellness brands carry a story as distinctive as Bali’s Fivelements, the plant-forward healing retreat that has drawn guests to the hills above Ubud since 2007. Now under the ownership of hospitality group GOCO, the brand is preparing to leave its island home behind and grow into a global collection of wellbeing destinations.
A Balinese pioneer grows beyond the island
Fivelements built its reputation on a simple premise: that food, healing, nature and community belong together. Its riverside retreat paired plant-based cuisine with traditional Balinese healing practices long before either became fashionable in hospitality. In 2024 the brand was acquired by GOCO Hospitality, a Bangkok-based group with four decades of experience across wellness development and operations. For GOCO, the purchase marked its first step into running a consumer-facing brand of its own.
The expansion map
The rollout begins in Thailand, where Fivelements Samui is set to open in 2027. The original Ubud property will then be reimagined in 2028, before attention turns to Europe. New destinations are planned for Switzerland in 2029 and Montenegro in 2030, taking the brand from a single island retreat to a portfolio that spans three continents within six years.
Each location will be shaped by its own setting rather than copied from a template. The stated intention is a network of retreats and personalised wellbeing programmes that share a common philosophy but express it through local architecture, culture and traditions. In Switzerland that may mean alpine scenery and longevity diagnostics; in Montenegro, Adriatic coastlines and Mediterranean plant life.
Longevity science meets ancestral wisdom
What separates the plan from a conventional resort expansion is its clinical ambition. GOCO intends to combine contemporary diagnostics and longevity science with the ancestral wisdom that made Fivelements notable in the first place. Guests could expect measurement, data and personalisation alongside fasting programmes, sacred healing rituals and plant-based dining.
The strategy draws on the background of Josephine Leung, managing partner of GOCO and co-founder of the Bangkok longevity clinic OLiv. Her work in personalised health informs a model built around continuous care rather than an occasional holiday reset. Ingo Schweder, the group’s founder and chief executive, describes the goal as helping people at every stage of their wellbeing journey, not simply building beautiful resorts.
A personal mission
The convictions behind the brand are personal as well as commercial. Schweder and Leung have both experienced cancer, an encounter with illness that reshaped how they think about health. Their view is that care should be proactive and continuous, begun long before sickness forces the issue.
The ambition, as Schweder has framed it, is to close a divide he has long observed: hospitals that have yet to learn hospitality, and hotels that have yet to take health seriously. Their philosophy is now central to every new Fivelements destination on the drawing board.
A market in motion
The timing is grounded in hard numbers. The Global Wellness Institute values the worldwide wellness economy at roughly £5.1 trillion, and analysts expect wellness tourism alone to keep expanding at pace through the next decade, with Grand View Research projecting the sector to reach £1.8 trillion by 2035. Guests increasingly book trips with health outcomes attached, from diagnostics to sleep programmes, rather than simple pampering. Market researchers already value wellness tourism at well over a trillion dollars a year, and growth in Asia and Europe remains the strongest driver.
For a group that has advised on more than 400 projects worth over £3.4 billion across some 42 countries, running a brand rather than consulting for one is a new discipline. GOCO has spent its history helping other people’s spas and resorts succeed; with Fivelements it owns the outcome. If the model works, the company will hold a rare position: a wellness operator with genuine roots in local healing traditions and the scientific credentials to back them up.
The first test arrives with the Thai opening in 2027. Until then, all eyes among industry watchers will be on how a Balinese retreat translates its quiet rituals into a format that can travel, and whether longevity science and ancestral practice can genuinely share a roof.