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

Table 6: Predictors for the number of "soft" treatments
Coefficients
Predictor
pvalu
Unstandardized Standardized e
Familyoperated
1.60 0.17 0.03
Skiing 1.73 0.19 0.02
Price 1.87 0.24 0.01
The number of medical treatments and educational courses (“hard” treatments), on the other
hand, could be significantly predicted by 5 characteristics (adjusted r² = 0.32, p < 0.001;
Table 7). Medical orientation is found in large hotels which specialize on meeting the needs
of older people rather than on families or couples, and is typical for hotels with thermal water.
Table 7: Predictors for the number of "hard" treatments
Coefficients
Predictor Unstandardized Standardized p-value
Couples targeted -0.66 -0.21 0.03
50+ targeted 1.05 0.30 0.01
Families targeted -0.59 -0.19 0.05
Thermal water 1.04 0.28 0.01
Number of rooms 0.48 0.26 0.02
Regarding the particular wellness offers per hotel, no common pattern could be found which
would indicate different sophisticated philosophies. An inspection of the web pages shows
that the majority of hotels do not profile themselves with an individual wellness concept, so
the wellness focus is seldom used to create a distinguished USP. As already mentioned above,
in many cases wellness is treated as synonym for relaxing and feeling well.
This is further demonstrated by an analysis of the promised effect of the treatments offered. It
is clearly seen that relaxation, beauty and general health (vitality, fitness, refreshing,
strengthening the immune system) are the most widespread effects by far, whereas specific
health programs, educational efforts or spiritual approaches play, in comparison, a marginal
role (Table 8).
Table 8: Promised effects
Aim/Promise Percentage
Relaxation 29
Spiritual/Mental health 5
Harmony between body and soul 10
Health in general 24
Specific health treatments 7
Change of behavior or thinking 4
Beauty 29