Health, Wellness and Tourism: healthy tourists, healthy business ...

Health Spa and Wellness – Competition or Supplement?
The Czech Republic Case
Alžbeta Kiráľová
Vysoká škola obchodní v Praze/ University of Business in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
alzbeta.kiralova@vso-praha.eu
Abstract
This paper examines the relations between health spa and wellness in the Czech Republic.
While the importance of health spa to the Czech economy is generally acknowledged wellness
is often seen as a second-rate activity with no or very low effect on health because of the
average length of stay and lack of treatments complexity.
The Czech Republic combines a number of important attributes as a destination for health spa
tourism, with a long lasting tradition of health spa culture. It offers climatic spas, healing hot
and cold springs, healing torf and mud - all for treatment and recuperation and a high standard
of services for medical and wellness tourism at cost–effective rates. The paper starts with a
short introduction of tourism in the Czech Republic followed by health state and aging
characteristic of the Czech Republic and implications for tourism. Together with the
introduction of the Czech health spa industry the place of wellness in the Czech Republic
tourism industry is explored and complements this with simple statistics.
It reports about an exploratory case study that looked at the relation between health spa and
wellness in the Czech Republic from the point of view of tourists. The aim of the study was to
explore the relation of both and to consider the expectations of tourists in this field.
Accordingly, the management of facilities has been contacted individually; tourists were
investigated through a survey. The concluding sections discuss options in attracting tourists to
motivate them to frequent health spas and wellness visits.
Keywords: Tourism, Health Spa, Wellness, Czech Republic
Introduction
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country, situated in Central Europe with the total area of
78.866 sq km. Its total boundaries are 1.881 km (border countries: Austria 362 km, Germany
646 km, Poland 658 km, Slovakia 215 km). Climate is temperate, affected by the interaction
of oceanic and continental effects.