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

Almost three quarters of all Germans (71.9%) preferred a health vacation lasting eight nights
or longer. 25% of the questioned persons would favour four to seven nights duration, whereas
short time trips to health destinations were only chosen by 3.1% of the Germans.
When repositioning a destination, the infrastructure and set of offers are of great importance.
However, the real expectations of the guests are often unknown and the success is based
rather on intuition than knowledge. Therefore it was an important aspect of the study to find
out which of the offers are attractive enough to be paid fully or partially by the guest. The
study revealed that next to classical massage (33.1%), aqua sports / swimming (29.1%) were
of strong interest for German health tourists. For dancing (21.8%), relaxation techniques
(20.2%) and gymnastic lessons (19.9%) there was also a large readiness stated to pay the offer
completely. However, less than 10% of the respondents wanted to pay for dietary cures. In
general, traditional spa treatments with local remedies or water treatments after Kneipp as
well as modern offers such as Ayurveda and Thalasso therapy were stated to be less attractive.
Additionally, it can be stated that with the rising age of the participant the willingness to pay
offers partially or fully private decreased. This was specially the fact for the offers of dancing,
personal trainer, yoga, Thalasso therapy and hot stone treatments. For established treatments
such as cardiovascular training, gymnastic lessons or Nordic walking, an equal readiness for
payment was found among younger as well as older Germans.
Corresponding preferences were also found in the destinations: only two of 23 treatments
were used by more than half of the guests: the participation of swimming / aqua sports was
68.7%; classical massage was used by 57.7%. Additionally, 15 of the 23 offers in the
questionnaire had been attended by less than 20% of the visitors. These can be stated as of
less importance when developing health offers in a destination. The results cannot be
explained with the occurrence of the services: e.g. treatments with local remedies were
offered in 87.5% of the destinations, however, they were used only by 9.6% of the guests.
Similar results were found with other treatments.
Important for the destinations was the fact that of all users of the different treatments, the
group of “satisfied” or “very satisfied” customers reached always fractions above 80% of all
responses. This revealed a very positive state of health tourism in Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania.
Special target groups for health destinations
With the help of a two-step-cluster analysis, specific potential visitor groups with similar
interests in health vacations were identified. Sixteen characteristics representing different
expectations were analysed: thirteen of the most important offers for health vacations, the
preferred duration of stay, the preferred type of accommodation and the accepted maximum
cost for a health vacation. Additionally, six socio-demographic factors were taken into
account: gender, age, family status, employment, highest grade of education and net
household income.
The analysis resulted in four clusters. One of them was the group of “males with little interest
in health vacation” and was for obvious reasons neglected. The largest group was the
“married group of women interested in health vacations”. 65.9% of this group were persons
aged 35 to 54. 40% of this cluster were full-time employed and another 32.8% part-time
working. The group correlated highly in their awareness of health. The preferred
accommodation was the four-star-hotel (23.3%) followed by the rehabilitation clinic (20.9%).
The group of people accepting a maximum of below 100 Euro for one day stay including