Wellness tourism represents a growing international trend for health-conscious consumers who are seeking to improve their physical and mental wellbeing. It is also a multi-billion dollar industry supporting workers and communities globally. The interplay between employee wellbeing and customer wellbeing in the service production process is not well understood and it is not unreasonable to suppose that in the pursuit of facilitating the wellbeing of customers, the wellbeing of tourism employees in the process may be affected in ways that are difficult to reconcile. Contextualised to the wellness tourism sector and using the lens of dirty work (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999), this paper explores the contested areas of wellness tourism work and lays the groundwork a research agenda for advancing the field.