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

interest activity and health and well-being tourism, it truly can form a unique attraction,
deepen visitor’s satisfaction, and create a valuable health tourism experience for visitors.
Keywords: Special interest tourism, well-being, heath, Jing-Mei Villa, Da-Muo Yijin Kung
Introduction
The rapid development of urbanization and industrialization had increased the stress on
everyday life, and as a result, affected people’s health and well-being. Therefore, the need in
activities that could release stress and enhance health is very urgent. Countryside tourism has
leisure tourism and stress relief functions, and has become an important leisure activity for
people pursuing a healthy life. This boosted the development of health and well-being
tourism. In addition, with the arrival of an aging society and the awareness of a healthy living,
maintaining a healthy life has become a trend in the modern world. From healthy diet, leisure
activities and constant exercise to the establishment of resorts focusing on health and wellbeing,
all indicated people’s attention to their welfare. Public’s concept on health has changed
from getting treatments from hospital and clinics to the idea of preventive medicine, using a
more natural method to maintain the health of body, mind and spirit. It is to not only pursuing
physical health, but further seek environmental and mental health, and eventually protect and
maintain the health of both body and mind.
Due to the competitiveness in the public tourism market and the diverse tourism needs people
have nowadays, tourism businesses have been gradually focusing on minority markets and
come up with special interest tourism, or theme tours, that’s made specifically for tourists’
special needs. Opaschowski (2001) stated that tourism in the 21 Century is like buying a piece
of paradise. Tourism business is an experience industry, and consumers are willing to spend
money to experience a different kind of happiness. They are looking for a kind of enjoyment,
atmosphere, and beauty, finding different sensory stimulation and experience. Therefore,
there is a growing population in Special Interest Tourism (SIT).
Jing-Mei Villa is located in the eastern park of Taiwan. It is a beautiful and vigorous
environment with green mountains, rushing water, and fresh air. Nearby scenic attractions
include Yuan-Sen Applied Botanic Garden, Chu-Lu Ranch, Hong-Ye Hot Spring, Little
Huang-Shan, and Shan-Yuan Beach. The owner of Jing-Mei Villa felt people’s need of health
and well-being. He adopted Da-Muo Yijin Kung into the activities and paired it with healthy
diets and beautiful leisure environment, and developed a health and well-being tourism for
people to maintain their health while in leisure activity. This study has based on the concept
of eat healthy and play happy to explore the relationship among tourists’ satisfaction, leisure
involvement and health benefit on the product and service of health and well-being tourism, in
order to provide associated industry some insight when managing this type of special interest
tourism.
Literature Review
Satisfaction
Leisure satisfaction is the psychological result one has after a leisure experience. Bulltena &
Klessing (1969) thought leisure activity satisfaction was decided by the level of coincidence
of one’s expectation and actual experience. Leisure Satisfaction is to what degree an
individual is currently satisfied with their leisure experiences and activities (Beard & Ragheb,
1980). Oliver (1981) indicated whether consumer is satisfied or not comes from the
comparison of their expectation and actual purchase result. Fonell (1992) stated satisfaction is
a reflection of consumer’s overall feeling of like or dislike after they accepted the service (or