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

One 54 (13.3) Yes 180 (44.3)
2-4 216 (53.2)
> 4 121 (29.8)
Long (>3d) holidays during the past 12
months
Are you interested in attending a wellbeing
holiday?
None 51 (12.6) No / unsure 122 (30.0)
One 110 (27.1) Yes 284 (70.0)
2-4 194 (47.8)
> 4 51 (12.6)
Results
In order to test how push and pull variables, demographics and travelling behaviour influence
on tourists’ interests in conducting wellbeing holidays, we inputted 32 push factor variables,
20 pull factor variables, gender, education, profession, phase of life, annual gross income of
the household, the number of short and long holidays conducted during the past 12 months,
and past wellbeing holiday experience in the model as independent variables. The push and
pull factors were measured in a five-point Likert scale whereas demographics and travel
behaviour variables were categorical.
The results show that customers’ interest in attending a wellbeing holiday can be predicted
with five push factors and five pull factors, and in addition with all the three travel behaviour
factors inputted in the model (Table 2). However, it seems that demographic variables do not
have as strong explanatory power as the above mentioned variables given that the iteration
process excluded all the demographic variables from the model.
The Wald statistic is commonly used to test the significance of the individual coefficient for
each independent variable in a logistic regression model (Hair et al., 1998). In this case the
Wald statistic shows how well the variable explains the difference between the groups of
respondents. The Wald statistics show that previous experience of a wellbeing holiday (i.e.
has the respondent been on a wellbeing holiday) has the strongest effect in the model,
followed by two Pull Factors namely “Water park and/or spa” and “The destination is childfriendly”.
However, while previous experience and water park/spa have positive effect on the
interest toward a wellbeing holiday, the negative beta (β) value of child-friendly destination
indicates that as the importance of child-friendliness of the destination increases the interest in
wellbeing holidays decreases. This is the case also with another Pull Factor namely
“Possibility for packaged services” and two Push Factors, “Viewing the scenery” and
“Participating physical activities”. The most significant Push Factor motivating customers’
interest in attending a wellbeing holiday is the ability to refresh.
Taking a closer look on the Travel Behaviour variables, the odds ratio [Exp(B)] indicates that
the odds of those having experience on a wellbeing holiday being interested in attending a
wellbeing holiday are 5,5 times greater than the odds of those never been on a wellbeing
holiday. Moreover, the likelihood to be interested in a wellbeing holiday increases
significantly as the number of annual holiday trips increases. This is the case especially in
short holidays as the likelihood of being interested in a wellbeing holiday among those who
have made at least two short (≤ 3 days) holiday trips during the past 12 months is over 9 times
greater than the odds of those who have not made a single holiday during the past 12 months.
However, it seems that those who have made 2-4 long (> 3 days) holidays during the past 12
months are less likely to be interested in a wellbeing holiday than those who have not made