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

Data and Methods
To examine tourist motivations (push and pull factors), a computer aided survey was
conducted to potential Finnish tourists in Matka 2009 travel fair in Helsinki, Finland.
Altogether 32 push factor statements (mainly Pearce 2005, Pearce & Lee 2005) and 20 pull
factors including statements covering the six As (attractions, accessibility, amenities,
available packages, activities, ancillary services) defined by Buhalis (2000) were adapted
from the earlier studies. For the purposes of this study, a total number of 406 effective
responses without missing values were used. The data is divided into two groups using an apriori
segmentation based on the interest respondents have towards wellbeing holidays.
Logistic regression analysis with backward stepwise selection procedure was used, with the
cut-off statistical significance selected at the 0.10 level. The target (dependent) variable is a
binary/dichotomous variable in which 0 = unsure/not interested in wellbeing holidays, and 1 =
interested in wellbeing holidays. The independent variables included push and pull factors,
demographic factors, travelling habits (how many short and long trips taken during last 12
months), and past wellbeing tourism experiences. Age as a demographic variable was
excluded from the analysis due to a large number (24%) of missing values.
As Table 1 show, the data is female dominated with 65 percent of females and 35 percent of
males, well educated, and dominated by singles or couples without children. It seems that the
respondents travel a lot, which is logical in view of the place of data collection. However,
majority of the respondents have not been on a wellbeing holiday but 70 percent of them
appear to be interested in taking part on a wellbeing holiday.
Table 1. Sample profile.
Frequency
Frequency
(%)
(%)
Gender Profession
Male 143 (35.2) Leading position 37 (9.1)
Female 263 (64.8) Official 146 (36.0)
Education Manual worker 79 (19.5)
Comprehensive school 28 (6.9) Entrepreneur 27 (6.7)
Matriculation 69 (17.0) Unemployed 7 (1.7)
Vocational education 91 (22.4) Retired 33 (8.1)
Polytechnic degree 95 (23.4) Student 69 (17.0)
University degree 121 (29.8) Other 8 (2.0)
Other 2 (0.5)
Phase of live
Annual gross
(household)
income
I live alone 118 (29.1) < 15.000 € 57 (14.0)
Couple, no children 103 (25.4) 15.000-29.999 € 75 (18.5)
Children < 7 yr. 25 (6.2) 30.000-44.999 € 81 (20.0)
Children 7-15 yr. 40 (9.9) 45.000-59.999 € 70 (17.2)
Children > 15 yr. 24 (5.9) 60.000-74.999 € 52 (12.8)
Couple, children moved 77 (19.0)
away
75.000-89.999 € 41 (10.1)
Other 19 (4.7) ≥ 90.000 € 30 (7.4)
Short (≤3d) holidays during the past 12 Have you ever been on a wellbeing
months
holiday?
None 15 (3.7) No 226 (55.7)