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

and Bushell (2009, 11) have defined wellness tourism as follows: “Wellness tourism is a
holistic mode of travel that integrates a quest for physical health, beauty, or longevity, and/or
a heightening of consciousness or spiritual awareness, and a connection with community,
nature, or the divine mystery. It encompasses a range of tourism experiences in destinations
with wellness products, appropriate infrastructures, facilities, and natural and wellness
resources.” All in all there is not one widely accepted definition. In the Finnish language the
words wellness and wellbeing are complex, especially in the tourism context. Reason for this
is that both words are translated into ‘hyvinvointi’ which causes confusion and misuse of the
words. In marketing point of view wellness tourism is usually connected to luxury products
and five-star hotels. However, wellbeing tourism can contain products and services from a
wider scale as it can comprise pampering, different (sport and fitness) activities and
experiences of luxury. The concept of wellbeing tourism suits better in Finnish context
because the wider content and description highlights better the Finnish understanding of
‘hyvinvointi’. (Kangas & Tuohino 2007, Konu et al. 2010.) Altogether, the definition of
Sheldon and Bushell (2009) is suitable for this study as it includes widely motivation factors –
more detailed both push and pull factors.
The motivations and profiles of health and wellbeing tourists have been studied rather little.
Some studies have focused on different sub-sectors of health, wellness and wellbeing tourism
– such as spa tourism or spiritual tourism (Lehto et al. 2005, Mak et al. 2009, Smith & Puczkó
2009) – but more general research, concerning wellbeing tourists in general, has been quite
rare. In addition, most of the studies concentrating on examining wellbeing tourism
motivations have focused on push factors (internal motivations) and have ignored the
importance of pull factors. It is necessary to understand both push and pull motivations and
their relationship to market efficiently a particular destination (Baloglu & Uysal 1996).
This study aims to enhance the rather slim body of knowledge on wellbeing tourism by
providing information about the push and pull factors that can explain the interest towards
wellbeing tourism holidays. Goal is to investigate possible predictors – push and pull factors,
socio-demographical factors and previous travel behaviour – of tourists’ interests in wellbeing
tourism holidays as opposed to tourists that are not interested in above mentioned holidays.
Tourist Motivations – Push and Pull Factors
Motivation has for long been a major topic in tourism research (Crompton 1979, Dann 1981,
Mak et al. 2009, Nowacki 2009, Park & Yoon 2009, Pearce 2005). Backman et al. (1995)
emphasised that motivations are interconnected with individuals’ basic needs for developing
preferences, participating diverse activities, and expecting satisfaction. The motivations of
wellbeing and wellness activities, participating in wellbeing holiday or purchasing wellbeing
and wellness products and services are also connected to customers’ needs and interests.
The push and pull model (Crompton 1979) is one of the most popular typology of tourist
motivation. The model emphasizes that tourist’s choice of a travel destination is influenced by
two forces – push and pull factors. Push factors are underlying individual motivations that
push individuals from home, and pull factors are attributes and features of a destination,
service or a product that pull individuals toward a destination. That is to say, people travel
because they are pushed by their internal motives and pulled by external forces of a travel
destination (Lam & Hsu 2006). It has been remarked that most push factors derive from
individual’s intrinsic or intangible desires, for instance, from dream fulfilment, rest and
relaxation, health and fitness, desire for escape, adventure seeking, novelty seeking, prestige,
and socialization (Chon 1989, Lam & Hsu 2006, Uysal & Jurowski 1993). Pearce and Lee