Phuket named Canada's top wellness pick in 2026 travel awards

Phuket has come out on top in the wellness category of Air Canada Vacations' 2026 Travellers' Top Picks Awards, an annual program where Canadian travelers vote for their favorite destinations across ten categories. The winners were announced on September 22 at the Universal Event Space near Toronto, at the end of a voting round that drew more than 1.3 million ballots.

The result arrives as Canadian travel to Thailand is already trending upward. Between January 1 and September 21 this year, 180,510 Canadians visited the country, a rise of 2.35 percent over the same period in 2025. Canada is Thailand's ninth-largest long-haul source market, a modest ranking that officials in Bangkok clearly want to move up.

Deputy government spokesperson Ploytalay Laksameesangchan connected the win to Thailand's "value-led tourism" strategy, which favors visitors who stay longer and spend more over simple arrival counts. Wellness travelers tend to do both, and officials say they now plan to deepen health and wellness tourism cooperation with Canada to build on the attention.

Phuket's wellness reputation did not appear overnight. Over the past decade the island has added spa resorts, yoga and meditation retreats, and hotel wellness programs alongside its older identity as a beach and nightlife destination. Many of these newer venues sit away from the main tourist strips of Patong or Kata, tucked into the hills near Kamala, the quieter beaches of the west coast, or inland near Chalong.

That geography is part of what makes a wellness trip to Phuket work, or not. A retreat 20 minutes from the nearest 7-Eleven is a different experience than one on a busy beach road, and getting between the two, or between a hotel and a morning yoga session across town, usually means arranging your own transport rather than waiting on hotel shuttles or metered taxis.

This is where a marketplace like Balm Rentals fits into the picture, alongside the island's existing rental shops and tour operators. The app shows the price, deposit and rental terms for a scooter or car before any payment changes hands, in the traveler's own language, and lists only legally operating, checked rental partners in one place instead of leaving visitors to compare scattered stalls by the roadside. For a Canadian visitor arriving for a week of spa mornings and quiet beaches, that kind of clarity removes one more thing to negotiate on arrival, and it is meant to support, not replace, the local operators who already run Phuket's rental scene.

Whether the Air Canada Vacations award translates into a lasting increase in Canadian arrivals will likely depend on how Thailand follows through on the cooperation officials have described. For now, it gives Phuket a data point to point to as it competes for a segment of travelers who research destinations carefully before choosing where to spend a wellness holiday.