The Ranch Malibu: Operationalizing Wellness Tourism on TikTok

Introduction

Over 25 years ago, Howard Leichter (1997) described the wellness movement as “inherently discriminatory, elitist, and exclusive,” (p. 361) and sequential scholarship has furthered this point of view. At the same time, however, through rhetorical and mediated representations of wellness, the global industry of wellness trends, products, and services has grown to be worth over 4 trillion dollars, with an expected growth to over 7 trillion dollars in 2025 (McGroarty, 2020). Thus, wellness communication continues to be a burgeoning area of research with scholars theorizing this growth and describing the social and cultural impacts of the industry. For example, rhetorician Colleen Derkatch (2018, 2022) explains that wellness surrounds all of us and is a state of being one can never truly achieve due to its ubiquitous nature. Therefore, corporations, brands, and individuals can join the wellness industry and find ongoing success through the promotion of ideas, products, services, and experiences. In addition, the representation of wellness on social media platforms has only served to grow the industry and its messaging, especially considering the popularity of wellness social media influencers, popular online users who share their everyday lives online in exchange for brand sponsorships (Wellman, 2023).

In this article, we explore The Ranch, a luxury fitness and wellness retreat company based in Malibu, California with existing and in-progress locations in Italy, New York, and Colorado, through the perspective of a social media influencer named Tara. Originally a common place to spot celebrities looking to lose weight, The Ranch has become popularized in recent years as influencers from around the world have begun to attend the retreat and share their experiences publicly online. The Ranch Malibu is a very specific brand of wellness tourism, a growing area of the wellness industry focused on improving one’s health and wellness by traveling to other areas of the world and participating in wellness-focused activities. The Ranch Malibu is geared toward individuals looking to get away from their day to day lives, convene with nature, follow a “clean” diet, and participate in daily exercise. However, when personal accounts of The Ranch Malibu retreat experience gain popularity on social media, wellness tourism becomes operationalized in a way that promotes extreme dieting and exercise, the moralization of health, and wellness as elitist. While not necessarily the fault of the social media influencer, content creation practices surrounding wellness tourism allows people to find success through capitalizing on the wellness trends popular on social media at any given time. Influencers can then grow their following and create a successful online brand by promoting aspects of wellness tourism that may be trending due to their bizarre, dangerous, or even just novel and unique enough to garner the attention of the public. In this article, we explain the connections between wellness rhetoric, wellness tourism, and social media influencers before discussing the implications of popularizing wellness retreats through content. This article fills a gap in the new media communication and wellness tourism literature by examining what values wellness retreats communicate to attendees and the public, and the potential implications of this messaging, especially when communicated through a wellness influencer’s experiences.

Literature Review

Case Study: The Ranch Malibu

According to the retreat’s website (The Ranch Malibu, 2023), The Ranch hosts “award-winning luxury fitness & wellness retreats” across the globe including in Malibu, California, Italy at the Palazzo Fiuggi, and the company is currently planning an expansion for a third and fourth retreat center in Vail, Colorado in late 2023, and Hudson Valley, New York scheduled to open in the spring of 2024. The Ranch first gained widespread popularity for being known as a wildly expensive “celebrity fat camp,” (Tempesta, 2022) attended by the rich and famous who pay thousands of dollars to spend all day hiking and being fed six almonds (Jones, 2016). Largely, this recent popularity spike grew from popular podcaster and social media creator Tinx, and the subject of this study—Tara, sharing their experiences at The Ranch on their social media accounts.

The Ranch Malibu has multiple stay and experience packages. The least expensive is their “The Ranch Malibu” package, which lasts 6 nights and 7 days and totals US$9,200 per person, or US$7,600 per person if one chooses to share a room. In addition, they offer an extended stay package that lasts 8 nights and 9 days, which adds about US$2,000 onto the per person price. Their final option is the private package, in which the entire resort is dedicated to a specific group. This adds a little over US$3,000 to the per-person rate. These rates are largely all-inclusive, but they do offer add-ons like intravenous therapy (IV) therapy for an additional fee (The Ranch Malibu, 2023).

During their stay at The Ranch, attendees can expect to spend about 4 hr per day hiking, as well as spending time in strength classes, yoga classes, and receiving massage therapy. In addition, The Ranch Malibu serves a plant-based, organic, local diet. They claim that their meals and snacks will leave attendees feeling full and ready for the activities of the day. However, they also state that an average day of food at The Ranch totals about 1,400 calories (The Ranch Malibu, 2023). For comparison, the recommended daily calorie intake is 2,000 calories per day for women and 2,500 calories per day for men (National Health Service, 2018).

Even still The Ranch Malibu has a dedicated clientele. Not only do they boast a 50% return rate, but they state that guests can expect to lose 3%–6% of their bodyweight, ¹ as well as gain muscle. Furthermore, they claim that guests will leave feeling “transformed,” and with a new level of mental clarity and the tools to integrate these new, sustainable healthy choices into their lifestyle (The Ranch Malibu, 2023). This transformational rhetoric, combined with the widespread online popularity of The Ranch Malibu makes it an ideal case study to examine the ways that wellness tourism retreats sell the experience of wellbeing.

Method

To analyze how wellness tourism is communicated through social media influencers’ content created while at The Ranch Malibu, we chose to focus on one influencer whose account grew in popularity throughout her time at The Ranch. Tara, one of three creators running the public TikTok account @standfordtrio, documented her 3-week stay at The Ranch with her mother. ² During her stay, Tara’s videos about the wellness retreat went viral and her account grew to over 70,000 followers. The influencer’s coverage of The Ranch was also reported in The Daily Mail (Tempesta, 2022) and Tara created TikTok videos responding to the mass media coverage. We collected Tara’s TikTok videos for 30 consecutive days in August and September 2022. This time frame resulted in 33 TikTok videos and covered content from Tara’s first day at the retreat until her time at The Ranch had ended and she was reflecting on her experiences. We used the screen capture function on the primary researcher’s mobile device and stored the videos within a password-protected folder.

We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) of the narratives in Tara’s TikTok videos to analyze how The Ranch was reflected in her content. Thematic analysis is a common method within qualitative studies of social media and has built-in quality procedures to increase the rigor of the method. Following the two-stage procedure, the primary and secondary researchers conducted separate inductive open coding processes for all videos. They then met and discussed codes they developed during the initial coding procedure and discussed the development of possible themes before returning once more to the data. In the second stage, the researchers utilized the codes developed in open coding and in their initial meeting to focus code the videos. Following focus coding, the researchers met once again and developed themes that encompass the codes developed throughout data analysis. The findings below explicate how the sharing of Tara’s time at The Ranch Malibu on TikTok operationalizes wellness tourism in a way that encourages extreme dieting, furthers the moralization of health, and reinforces wellness trends and practices as elitist.

“Food Is a Type of Art”: Promoting Extreme Dieting

As wellness content on social media grows, so does the representation of dieting. The extreme, and sometimes obsessive, behavior surrounding the quality and purity of food leaves individuals with a condition that may lead to restrictive eating habits, the act of separating foods into “good” and “bad” categories, and possibly even removing entire food groups from their diet. When wellness tourism is mediated through TikTok, extreme dieting is modeled and encouraged. The Ranch diet is described in full on the retreat’s website and consists of organic, vegan, and gluten-free meals and snacks, supplemented with powders like the retreat’s own “Complete Greens” powder and black sea salt, colloquially named “Ranch Caviar.” The diet excludes alcohol, caffeine, dairy, soy, processed sugars, diet sweeteners, and gluten to “cleanse” and “revitalize” participants’ bodies. The Ranch also promotes their diet as one created with ingredients grown on-site in their certified organic garden or from nearby local farms, and the meal plans are thoroughly researched to focus on “quality of the calories” rather than quantity, resulting in a daily caloric intake of around 1,400 calories, as noted above.

In Tara’s first “What I eat in a day” video posted on TikTok, she detailed this low-calorie diet, including her hiking snack—six almonds—that she chose to save for later just in case she is hungry. She also shares that she and her mother have learned that they can go to a tree near their room to “forage” for extra snacks when hungry, although they are not sure what the fruit is that they are consuming. That evening, Tara records her dinner and states that before dinner every evening each attendee consumes a “customary bowl of lettuce” to increase satiety before they are given their dinner. Tara finishes the day in her room eating “low carb, low sugar, sour worms.” Sneaking the snack, Tara justifies her choice to her audience, suggesting she is feeling pressured to follow the extreme eating habits modeled and encouraged at the retreat. Tara frames her experience through this TikTok video, showing audiences that at The Ranch, the only way to be healthy is to eat a restrictive, low-calorie, “clean” diet and refrain from any type of indulgence.

In a later video, Tara films another full day of eating, including “the world’s tiniest fucking zucchini muffin” and cacao energy bites which gave Tara “no energy at all.” In another video, she shares that she once again was provided a zucchini muffin as a snack but feels like she should be eating three because they are too small and do not fill her up. Later in that same video, Tara left the retreat property and purchased a candy bar from a nearby convenience store.

Around this time in her content creation journey through The Ranch, Tara begins titling her videos “Surviving The Ranch,” insinuating that the retreat is not enjoyable, and in fact, suggesting that survival is not guaranteed. Throughout the creation of her TikTok videos presenting The Ranch as a retreat where extreme dieting is encouraged, Tara gained thousands of followers with videos climbing in views daily. She begins to play into what seems to be working for the algorithm, utilizing click-bait style titles and dramatic language within her videos, including filming herself writing “HELP” on the shower wall. She also utilizes humor and irony in her videos to avoid aligning herself too closely with the retreat’s values. For example, in one of her last “What I Eat in a Day” videos, Tara sarcastically exclaims that at The Ranch, they’re told that food is a type of art that should be enjoyed, and to never forget their “happiness quotient.”

“Clean, Simple, and Healthy”: The Moralization of Health

The dieting discourse presented at The Ranch Malibu and shared by Tara on TikTok stems from the idea that one’s health is a moral value, and therefore, healthy people are “good” and unhealthy people are “bad.” Tara first perpetuates this narrative while at the retreat through her nutrition content. As noted above, throughout her time at the retreat, she consumes sour worms in the privacy of her room. When she consumes the low-sugar candy, she notes she is eating it because she has “a disease.” Before sharing her snack of sour worms with her viewers, she states “I’m embarrassed, but we’re close enough now,” suggesting to her followers that this behavior is shameful, yet can be shared with her viewers, as she trusts them to understand her perspective. In another video, she sneaks a stick of “illegal” gum to stave off her hunger until the next meal. She says, “try and stop me, Ranch,” exemplifying how as Tara’s follower count and viewership grows, she leans into humor, irony, and sarcasm in her video creation. While the tone of Tara’s voice leads one to believe she is making these claims as a sort of tongue-in-cheek, inside joke between friends, many of the messages remain as examples of moralization discourse, reflecting Crawford’s (2006) theorization of healthism.

The moralization of health is furthered through the measuring and tracking of not only food, but bodies. While at The Ranch, attendees are measured using a machine called a Bod Pod. The Bod Pod is a computerized, egg-shaped device that measures an individual’s weight and volume to determine body density and calculate weight, body fat, muscle mass, and water. It has been championed for its ability to frequently and accurately test individuals’ body composition over time and is free for attendees at The Ranch. In one video, Tara says this testing does not cost extra money, like other experiences explained in the findings section below, because “they want to fat shame you and they’ll do it for free.” Another example of sarcasm, it is clear that Tara is interested in tracking her progress through the Bod Pod but feels uncomfortable with how this type of body tracking is encouraged by The Ranch and presented as a moral evaluation of each retreat attendee.

Many of Tara’s videos suggest The Ranch encourages those in attendance to believe that their morality and health are intrinsically tied, and it can be seen clearly in one of her final videos discussing mental and physical changes while at the retreat, including the loss of 11 lbs. While she states weight loss wasn’t “explicitly” her goal, she does say this experience is proof that when you are “putting good stuff in your body and moving” things can change quickly. She equates weight loss to a result of positive, healthy choices during her time at The Ranch. These positive choices include a low-calorie intake, a vegan diet, measuring portion sizes, and exercising for hours at a time through hikes, yoga, and group fitness classes. Tara’s content surrounding her weight loss because of healthy choices provides evidence that healthy choices are good, and therefore, she is a good person who had a successful experience at The Ranch.

The Ranch perpetuates these narratives and encourages attendees to continue the moralization discourse after they leave the retreat by sending a report card after their stay is complete. The report card includes starting and ending statistics, including Bod Pod measurements and changes in attendees’ chest, diaphragm, abdomen, hips, glutes, and quadricep width. The Ranch Malibu attendees are also provided an evaluation of the number of fitness classes they completed during their stay. Tara shares her evaluation in one of her final videos on the subject that she ultimately earned an 80% for her efforts throughout her 3 weeks at The Ranch Malibu, even after boasting at least a 5% deduction in every category and attending almost all fitness classes offered.

“We Believe That Health Is the Ultimate Luxury”: Wellness as Elitist

The Ranch Malibu website does not shy away from promoting their wellness retreat as a “luxury” experience (The Ranch Malibu, 2023) and Tara’s representation of the retreat through TikTok reinforces the claim that often, wellness and wellness tourism is designed for specific individuals over others. While wellness tourism may not always be elitist in nature, the growth of the industry and the economic environment surrounding it create spaces of exclusivity and The Ranch is an example of an opportunity made inaccessible for most individuals. The language used throughout the website describes the type of attendees The Ranch hopes to engage with luxury, relinquish responsibility, life transformation, optimal health, detoxify, achieve all you can, boost metabolism, and enjoy food that is “artfully prepared” for each guest.

To attend The Ranch, attendees must have the ability to leave their daily lives including jobs, partners, children, and others for whom they are responsible to and for. This inherently excludes certain individuals from attending. As noted earlier, The Ranch packages start at US$7,600 for a 6-night stay with a roommate. Tara and her mother chose to attend the retreat for 3 weeks, and in a video nearing the end of her stay, Tara explains their time at The Ranch totaled US$22,600 per person for the two of them.

Elitism is also operationalized through virtue signaling on behalf of The Ranch, its attendees, and the staff. In an early video, Tara states a variety of reasons why people attend The Ranch. Some of the reasons she lists are “the physical challenge,” “the spiritual immersion,” and the experience of eating clean foods for an extended period. These reasons associate goodness and cleanliness with self-improvement and signal to audiences that attending The Ranch reflects virtuous behavior. In addition, the staff utilizes language that cues to their ideology surrounding wellness, especially holistic wellness practices, creating good vibes and energy, and focusing on positivity. For example, on a hike, Tara and the other attendees come across a rattlesnake. The attendees attempt to avoid the snake while a staff member reminds them that snakes are a sign of “health, prosperity, and fertility” so their seemingly negative experience is actually good fortune for them all.

The Ranch offers other luxuries to its guests as well, including a daily laundry service. In one video, Tara explains that this is “crazy” to her, but it means she would be able to wear the same clothes every day. However, she notes that she won’t do that because she feels like she would get “roasted” by the other attendees for not wearing a new outfit each day and repeating her clothing. As noted earlier in the findings, to not be seen as a creator that has fallen completely into the trap of The Ranch, Tara utilizes humor and sarcasm to convince her audience that she is not fooled by the retreat’s narrative. However, nearing the end of her stay Tara’s videos have noticeably changed. She begins to focus less on the negative aspects of The Ranch in her videos and more on the positive experiences she is having including being complimented by a celebrity, passing groups of men on long hikes, and learning how to cook clean recipes. Around this time, Tara also creates a video stating she may want to utilize what she has learned at The Ranch to create an accessible program that follows Ranch principles that her followers can do from home. This helps to resolve inner conflict for Tara, as her influencer fame surrounding her retreat experience has resulted in increased critique from her viewers who are noticing the elitist ideology present at The Ranch.

Discussion and Conclusion

Our study explores the social and cultural implications of wellness tourism and wellness retreats, especially as they become popularized through social media influencers. Understanding the structure, messaging, and intention of the wellness tourism destination and how it is then represented through the experiences of popular attendees allows scholars to explain the role of social media in the growth of the wellness industry. As wellness tourism is operationalized as a form of mediated entertainment capitalized on by social media influencers, wellness tourism and the industry at large grow in popularity. At the same time, misinformation and harmful ideas surrounding what wellness is and who it is for are also circulated to a broad, global audience at a fast pace.

Presenting a wellness tourism experience on TikTok through the eyes of a social media influencer yields greater insight into the vast reach the wellness industry has across the world. While we have noted the seemingly negative outcomes that manifest when a social media personality shares their daily life while on a retreat like The Ranch, the influencer herself is not to blame. Tara is regurgitating the language she has learned at the retreat and capitalizing on the outlandish messaging to gain a level of popularity on a platform that can be difficult to reach. TikTok is saturated with creators and wellness tourism is an area that remained untapped by social media influencers when Tara began sharing her time at The Ranch. The serendipitous timing of Tara’s trip and her desire to post about it online resulted in virality. While at times she shows a bit of unease in response to The Ranch’s ideology, Tara quickly hides her discomfort with humor and sarcasm which are quickly promoted by TikTok’s algorithm, encouraging her to continue making videos.

TikTok videos of The Ranch afford global audiences the ability to escape into the world of wellness tourism for free through the consumption of content. Creators like Tara go viral through their presentation of wellness retreats that are often inaccessible to the everyday person. This study offers a novel look at how wellness tourism can be further commodified beyond its original intentions. Wellness tourism as a holistic health and well-being experience is growing with the broader wellness industry (Dini & Pencarelli, 2022). The sharing of wellness tourism experiences on social media is aiding in this growth, as can be seen by Tara’s viral TikTok videos throughout her time at The Ranch Malibu. Tara is sharing her own experiences related to wellness, but she is also sharing messages she has learned and internalized while attending the retreat that are central to the belief system of The Ranch. This can result in harmful information spread, either knowingly or unknowingly, to large audiences far beyond what The Ranch may be able to reach with their own marketing and communication team. Influencers like Tara are providing free advertising for wellness tourism companies and their role in the growth of wellness tourism and the industry at large must continue to be analyzed.

Tara’s views on The Ranch not only expand the reach of wellness tourism but promote the broader ideology of wellness that continues to circulate through contemporary society. Content shared on TikTok about this wellness retreat encourages the expansion of wellness rhetoric and the logic of restoration and enhancement. As Derkatch (2018, 2022) notes, wellness is evergreen, as the way we talk about wellness as both restoring and enhancing our wellbeing means we will never truly be well. Therefore, retreats like The Ranch may always exist, especially as the retreat claims their methods can both restore and enhance attendees’ health. As Cederström and Spicer (2015) argue, the wellness syndrome will continue to prevail and provoke a sense of guilt and anxiety in those deemed unwell, and outlets like TikTok serve to attract new individuals suffering the same fate.

Wellness content on TikTok continues to increase in popularity, and as the space becomes more saturated existing and aspiring influencers are trying to find new topics to explore and new content to share that will aid in the growth of their online presence. However, the sharing of dangerous discourse through the lens of a wellness retreat presents the potential for negative impacts on both viewers of wellness content and our social and cultural understanding of wellness. In addition, the lack of adequate health certification of the influencer increases the risk for harm that accompanies their dissemination of health information. While the focus of this article is not misinformation, we recognize the increased misinformation spread among wellness influencers, especially those postig about nutrition, exercise, and weight loss, we and urge scholars to continue pursuing research that may lead to the decrease in misinformation on social media.

Our study contributes to the ongoing scholarship exploring TikTok’s potential as a health communication platform (Li et al., 2021; Roche et al., 2021; Stein et al., 2022). Our findings suggest TikTok is a place for users to share health and wellness information and experiences, but the platform also allows users to spread harmful ideas present within the wellness industry like elitism, extreme dieting, and the moralization of health. As noted, the operationalization of wellness tourism on TikTok creates a mediated experience shared with those who are not even present at the retreat, yet impacts them similarly to retreat attendees in that they too are privy to dangerous rhetoric. This harmful discourse is not the fault of any one party, rather, it is the result of a system allowed to prosper for many years without radical change. Without systemic shifts toward a more inclusive and safe space where misinformation is discouraged, the wellness industry will continue to be as Leichter (1997) once theorized: “discriminatory, elitist, and exclusive” (p. 361).

This study may be limited by its focus on only one social media influencer, rather than content produced by multiple individuals on TikTok. However, this study’s focus on one individual on one platform does not attempt to generalize to all creators and all platforms. The study’s attention to one creator on TikTok allows for a deep exploration of how The Ranch’s rhetoric is received, repackaged, and presented to mediated audiences. Future research could explore The Ranch more deeply through analyses of the company’s communication practices across social media platforms. Other studies may also collect social media data from multiple influencers who have attended The Ranch to compare their experiences at the retreat and how they present wellness tourism to audiences. Finally, future research may look broadly at the implications of wellness tourism being sold on social media platforms through popular users and everyday people and whether this type of advertising leads to increased participation in retreats and a greater global interest in the wellness industry.