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

etween their actual and expected living conditions – may lead to a deterioration of their
physical health (Kopp & Pikó 2006). The overall social consequence of the resulting illness
(loss of productivity, replacement, medication, etc.) will be a heavy burden imposed on state-,
local government- and household budget. It is no coincidence that research in Hungary related
to quality of life almost invariably focuses on health-oriented issues (Kopp & Kovács 2006).
No matter if it is mental or physical health that is examined, its status will be affected by
whether leisure time is spent travelling: levels of mental and physical health are affected
indirectly by leaving the everyday paths of movement behind. Utilising the ever-increasing
range of offers of medical tourism can contribute directly to preserving, even restoring mental
and physical fitness levels (Richards 1999, Neal et al. 2007).
If, based on the literature, we accept that there is a relationship between tourism and quality of
life, then it is justified to expect a method for measuring the qualities of this relationship. For
this reason, the present study aims at laying the theoretical and methodological foundations
for the development of an index which can be used to measure the impact of a person’s
involvement in (or exclusion from) tourism on their quality of life. Given the government
demand as set out in the current Hungarian National Tourism Strategy (2005) for
optimalization of the impact of tourism on quality of life (especially in relation to society,
cultural heritage and natural environment), the statistical assessment of changes is considered
desirable, even on the municipal level.
This study offers a short summary of the theoretical and methodological literature discussing
the relationship of quality of life and tourism. The authors explore the methodological
foundations of selected definitions, thereby producing the set of indicators which, by fitting
into the framework of social indicator systems, are capable of measuring the relationship
between tourism and quality of life. This set of indicators will later provide the basis for the
index measuring the relationship between tourism and quality of life.
As indicated above, a close link is evident between quality of life and health. In order to be
able to show the relationship of this link to tourism, the study examines aspects of quality of
life in the population of settlements that are involved in wellness tourism.
Subjective well-being as a basis of study
Subjective well-being research has difficulties in defining the concept. Although subjective
well-being, happiness and life satisfaction may be treated as synonymous categories, certain
distinctions can be made between these concepts. Following definitions of the concepts
introduced by Lengyel and Janky (2003), differences may best be understood if we accept the
notion that people associate personal happiness rather with their personal micro-surroundings:
family, children, or social relationships - while life satisfaction is seen as something of a
broader concept, related to work, institutions and live history. Other than the clarification of
concepts, subjective assessment of well-being has another cornerstone: its apriori experience.
When examining the relationship between objective and subjective well-being one may find it
convenient to extend these concepts in such a way that the former is associated with material
prosperity, and the latter is paired to individual happiness; for this reason the majority of
studies on subjective well-being have focused on the relationship between these two
phenomena (e.g. Molnár & Kapitány 2006). This relationship can not be avoided when
investigating the connection of tourism and subjective well-being, even though – as also
stated in the introduction – the primary aim of our study is not the demonstration of the
discrepancy between objective and subjective well-being.