Wellness hospitality has no shortage of language. It has a shortage of numbers.

We assessed 146 properties and multi-property groups against eight pathways, scoring each one on the quality of the evidence published rather than on the confidence of the claim. Nothing published scores 0. An assertion with no specification behind it scores 1. A named system, product or standard scores 2. A measurement, a test result or a third party verification scores 3, and only when a source URL sits on the record.

The average total is 7.1. The highest is 16.

Where the record is emptiest

The pathway with the least published information is the one about the electromagnetic environment in a bedroom. Of 146 properties, 115 publish nothing at all. Four publish a named system. One publishes anything that could be called a measurement.

This is not a claim that those buildings are harmful. It is a statement about the public record, and the public record on this subject is close to blank. A guest who wants to know whether their room is wired or wireless, where the access point sits relative to the bed, or whether the network can be switched off, has almost nowhere to look.

Light is the next emptiest. Seventy-three properties publish nothing about lighting: no colour temperature, no flicker performance, no blackout specification, in a sector that sells sleep. Air follows, with 66 publishing nothing about filtration grade, ventilation rate or any measurement of what is actually in the air.

Where it is fullest, and why that is not the good news it looks like

Biophilic and healing design is the strongest pathway by a distance. Ninety-nine properties reach 2 or better, and 32 reach 3.

That is the pathway that requires the least instrumentation. Publishing that a room opens onto a terrace, that the timber is reclaimed, that the landscape is planted with native species, costs an architect's press release. Publishing a particulate count costs a meter and the willingness to release the reading.

The same asymmetry runs through the whole dataset. Sixty-eight of 146 properties publish at least one measurement somewhere, and when you look at what those measurements are about, they are overwhelmingly resource consumption: litres of water saved, kilograms of waste composted, plastic bottles avoided. Those are real achievements and they are honestly reported. They are also measurements of the property's effect on the world, not of the world inside the property.

Almost nobody measures the room.

What this is not

A low score here means a property has not published something. It does not mean the property is unsafe, badly run or worse than a property scoring higher. Several of the emptiest records belong to buildings that are, by every other account, exceptional. Disclosure and quality are different things, and this index measures the first one.

It is also worth saying plainly that the ceiling is low for everyone. No property in the index scores above 16. There is no leader running away with this. There is a field that has not been asked the question before.

The cheapest thing a property can do

Most of the gap is not expensive to close. A property that already runs a reverse osmosis plant has water quality data. A property that already specifies its mattresses knows the fibre content. A property that has ever had an acoustic consultant near it has a decibel figure in a drawer.

The distance between a 2 and a 3 on most of these pathways is not a capital project. It is a decision to publish a number that already exists.