In 1831, the spa physician Dr. August Heinrich Peez stated in the second edition of his monograph "Wiesbaden and its healing springs" that Wiesbaden was "the most visited of all known health resorts in the world (...)" and that spa guests flocked here "from all parts of the world". 20 years later, in a city portrait of Wiesbaden in the Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung, an unnamed author praised the knowledge of the healing effects of the thermal springs "as ... spread throughout the world".

Now the term "world spa town" was in the air, so to speak. The actual creator of the term was the journalist Robert Haas. In a small essay about Schlangenbad, published in Darmstadt in 1852, he also refers to the "world spa town" of Wiesbaden, just an hour away; two years later he used the term in his Wiesbaden "Curcalender", which had been published since 1854. In 1858, Ferdinand Hey'l took up the term in his humorous satirical "Streiflichter"; however, it is striking that he did not use it in the Wiesbaden tourist guide he had been publishing since 1866.

In official municipal publications, the term "Weltkurstadt" (world spa town) is still not used for a long time; the spa brochure published by the municipal tourist office still only refers to the spa town in 1903. This did not change until around 1907, when the term "Weltkurort" (world health resort) was used, followed by "Weltkurstadt" (world spa town) the following year. The later spa director Hermann Rauch also called his "Monatsschrift für Kur- und Fremdenwesen", published from 1911 onwards, "Die Weltkurstadt" in the main title. The term continued to spread over the following decades until it was last used by the city for advertising purposes in the early 1960s.