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

M. Zuckerman defines wellness as programs devoted to an individual’s health and fitness,
designed to make the guests feel significantly better than when they arrived. The combination
of fun, exercise, a healthy and balanced diet, pampering relaxation, and education on
managing stress offers magnificent chance for renewal. According to Zuckerman a spa is a
comfortable environment in which guests learn how to use the tools of life enhancement and
get motivated to go back into the real world and practice what they have learned. 43
M. Joppe emphasizes the holistic aspect of wellness products and identifies some of the daily
stressors that drive users to access these services. 44
Some researchers propose that there are four essential ingredients associated with wellness:
• A lifelong approach emphasizing permanent lifestyle changes;
• Taking responsibility for one’s own actions;
• Adding to the quality of one’s life, not simply extending the length of life;
• Making choices that improves an individual’s position on the lifestyle continuum. 45
According to German experts, numerous definitions of wellness share common features: the
importance of life style, self-responsibility for health, and the exploitation of a person’s
potential for a better quality of health. 46
By many accounts, wellness can be seen as a state of health featuring the harmony of body,
mind and spirit with physical fitness, healthy nutrition and diet, relaxation, meditation, mental
activity/learning, environmental sensitivity and social contacts, a process in which an
individual makes choices and engages in activities in a way that leads to health-promoting
lifestyles, which in turn positively impact the multiple dimensions of the individual’s well
being. 47
Wellness is a dynamically developing industry in the Czech Republic with start-up around
2000. There is no widely accepted definition of wellness and the way how it is perceived is
very different. There are three main views on wellness in the Czech Republic:
• Wellness is a heterogeneous element which does not come under spa care and had not
had to be a part of health spa facilities or of spa destinations.
• Wellness is an appropriate supplement to spa care which can under the correctly
defined condition be a part of spa destinations but not a part of health spa facilities
(some experts accept wellness as a part of health spa facilities).
• Wellness is a part of all health spa facilities, with no contradiction between spa care
and wellness.
43
Verschuren, F.: Spa Health and Wellness Tourism: A New Product Portfolio at the Canadian Tourism
Commission, Canadian Tourism Commission, Vancouver 2004.
44
Joppe, M.: The Impact of the Wellness Revolution on the Spa Industry. 2003
45
Adapted from: Cardinal, B. J., Krause, J. V.: Physical Fitness: The Hub of the Wellness Wheel. Dubuque:
Kendell Hunt Publishing 1989.
46
Mueller, H., Lanz Kaufmann, E.: Wellness Tourism: Market analysis of a special health tourism segment and
implications for the hotel industry. University of Berne, Switzerland: Research Institute for Leisure and Tourism
2004. Downloaded from: http://www.lanzkaufmann.ch/doc/pub_art_vacationmeeting.pdf (last accessed 7 March
2010)
47
Finnicum, P., Zeiger, J. B.: Tourism and wellness: A natural alliance in a natural state. Parks and Recreation.
Vol. 31, Issue 9/1996, p. 84