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

Yoon & Uysal (2005) stated that push motivations are more related to internal emotional
aspects, while pull motivations are connected to external, situational, or cognitive aspects. On
the other hand, the push factors are origin-related, intangible or intrinsic desires of the
individual travellers, such as the desire for escape, rest and relaxation, health and fitness,
adventure, prestige, and social interaction. Meanwhile, pull factors are those that emerge as a
result of the attractiveness of a destination as it is perceived by the traveller. They include
tangible resources such as beaches, recreation facilities and historic resources as well as
travellers’ perception and expectation such as novelty, benefit expectation and marketing
image of the destination.
Chan and Baum (2007) investigated the motivation factors of ecotourists in ecolodge
accommodation by adopting the push and pull motivation factors. The findings revealed that
the eco-tourists are primarily attracted by the destination attributes (natural attractions,
wildlife, local lifestyle and eco-activities), where ecolodges are located (pull factors), and they
are also pushed by their social psychological desire to escape from their routine of normal life
(push factor). The identification of motivational factors in this study provides a clearer
account of what attracts the ecotourists to stay at ecolodges and suggested that the marketing
strategies for ecolodges should focus more on the destination attractions around the ecolodge
accommodation by positioning the ecolodges based on the unique destination attributes.
Nonetheless, conservation and protection the surrounding natural resources are important too
as these are the main motivational factors for tourists to patronize ecolodges. In contrast, Kim,
Lee and Klenosky (2003) examined the influence of push and pull factors on visitors to the
national parks in Korea. The results of a factor analysis identified four push factor domains
and three pull factor domains underlying respondents’ push and pull factor ratings. The push
factor domains suggested that the visitors to national parks in Korea considered the park to be
valuable recreational resources that provide important opportunity to appreciate natural
resources or enhance health or building friendship (consistent with results of 1999 Report of
Korean National Travel). Meanwhile the pull factor domains reflected the fact that the
national parks in Korea are relatively accessible and located close to most residential and
work areas. The study also provided the additional analyses investigated differences in push
and pull factor domains for different socio-demographic sub-groups and examined the
interrelationships among the push and pull factor domains. The study provided valuable
information in understanding Koreans’ motivation to visit national parks and the results hold
useful implication for park managers and researchers in studying how push-pull factors
impact tourists and visitors behaviour.
In line with aforementioned, it argues that the push and pull theory of tourist motivation can
be applied into health and spa tourism context. Similarly, there must be underlying factors
that motivate tourists for health and spa services while travel to a holiday destination, and
there must be certain health and spa attributes that attract the tourists to health and spa
facilities at the destination countries. Therefore, this research attempted to adopt push and pull
theory motivation concept in identifying the health and spa tourists’ motivation factors and
profiling these tourists.
The push-pull concept was utilized, with modifications being made to focus into health and
spa tourism, which is likely to be more central on the healthy lifestyles of the health and spa
goers and the holiday destination’s health and spa attributes. Accordingly, the push factors are
considered to be socio-psychological motivations that predispose the individual to travel (Oh
et. al., 1995), which evolves tourist’s personal attributes, or a demand-side approach which is
to understand tourist’s decision-making process, such as attitudes, perceptions, and learning