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

Discussions and Conclusions
The aim of the study was to find out what factors are the best predictors of tourists’ interest to
make wellbeing holidays. The study shows that there are only a small and distinct variety of
factors which can be proved as predictors of tourists’ interest in wellbeing holidays. The
previous experience of wellbeing holidays had the strongest effect as predictive factor. Also
the other previous travel experience affected positively to interest to make wellbeing holidays.
It can be concluded that the tourists that are interested to make wellbeing holidays are rather
experienced travellers.
Results show that the most important predictor of push factors for wellbeing trips is refreshing
(which according to Pearce (2005) belongs to the most important travel motives). This
supports also the findings of Mak et al. (2009) and Lehto et al. (2006). In addition, also less
important motives (see Pearce 2005) such as experiencing fashionable/trendy places and
aesthetic experiences affected positively to odds of the interest to make wellbeing holidays. It
seems that wellbeing and wellness destinations are seen as fashionable or trendy places to
visit. In contrast, two push factors lower the odds: viewing the scenery, and participating
physical activities. It is little surprising that the participating physical activities had a negative
effect. This is probably due that refreshing is seen to be accomplished by other ways than by
participating physical activities (cf. to the top five motivations Mak et al. 2009 found in their
study).
Pull factors that have positive effect on odds to interest to make wellbeing holidays were
“water park and/or spa”, “natural sights” and “accessibility in the destination”. The result is
supported by the studies which have shown the importance of nature environment in
wellbeing and wellness tourism. Accessibility in the destination seemed to be important too.
This will probably be one central issue in future as people are travelling also older (e.g. baby
boomers) and may have some disabilities needing special attention or arrangements.
Wellbeing and wellness destinations should thus consider accessibility, for instance, in their
infrastructure (spa and wellness facilities, wider walking paths etc.), information (clearly
marked signs etc.) and also in marketing (e.g. possibility get bigger letters on the website of
the destination/business). All in all, spa facilities as a pull factor had the most positive
influence to the odds. Two pull factors affected negatively to odds to interest to make
wellbeing holidays. These were “destination is child-friendly” and “possibility for packaged
services”. This shows that tourists that are interested in wellbeing holidays do not necessarily
want to travel places that are meant for children. One reason for this is that respondents that
were interested in wellbeing holiday were most likely going to make wellbeing holiday with
their spouse or with friends. In addition, it seems that tourists interested in wellbeing holidays
are interested individual services/wellbeing programmes as they are not interested in ready
made service packages.
It was interesting to find out that socio-demographic factors did not have statistically
significant role in predicting the tourists’ interest to make wellbeing holidays. This is
supporting the view that in the fragmented postmodern markets demographic factors can’t
reliably be used to explain differences between diverse market segments (Firaz et al. 1995,
Firaz & Shultz 1997). However, motivations, attitudes and other psychographical factors are
becoming and have become more important factors when explaining how segments differ
from each other (see. e.g. Cova & Cova 2002).
There are some similarities in the importance of wellbeing tourism motivation factors of this
study compared to wellbeing and wellness studies conducted in Asia and North America. It