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

There is a “rigid medical” approach, a very conservative and protective one which does not
tolerate the coexistence of different forms of health tourism and does not consider health spas
as a part of tourism.
The second, more open approach considers health spa as one of dynamically developing
forms of tourism.
Globalization creates a big pressure to health spa industry as well as the international
competition and the substitutes - there are about 850 spa companies in more than 500 biggest
spa places in Europe.
Czech health spas are visited by 600.000 guests every year. The rate of foreign guest to
residents in spa accommodation facilities was close to one to one in 2008 with a moderate
change for the benefit of residents in 2009 as can be seen from Table 3. About 50% of
international guests come from Germany the second biggest market is Russia, followed by
Austria, Slovakia, the USA, Poland and Israel (Table 3). 40 Guests coming from Germany,
Slovakia and some other countries are often taking advantage from Czech allowance spa care
as the health care system in their home countries allows them to travel for health spa care
abroad and it covers their medical treatments costs.
40 Lázeňský cestovní ruch – komparace zemí střední a východní Evropy. Downloaded from:
http://www.czechtourism.cz/files/statistiky/lazne.pdf (last accessed 7 March 2010)