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

thrills and excitement which sometimes even involves tourists’ taking physical risks that are
dangerous rather than health-promoting.
However, there seems to be infrastructure that is specifically designed to facilitate tourists’
health and well-being. An extensive literature review as well as previous research in the
Australian context (Inside Story, 2007; Voigt, 2009), as well as interviews with key
stakeholders, revealed three distinct core categories of wellness tourism providers. These
three provider groups can be labelled as (1) Beauty Spa Hotels/Resorts; (2) Lifestyle Resorts;
and (3) Spiritual Retreats (Figure 1).
Medical tourism providers cater
to tourists who travel because
they want to treat/cure a medical
condition.
MEDICAL
Tourism Providers
Special Interest
Tourism
HEALTH
Tourism
Overlap
‘Medical Wellness’
1. Medispas
2. Traditional European Spas
3. Therapeutic Recreation and
Rehabilitation
3. s
Figure 1: Typology of Health and Wellness Tourism
Wellness tourism providers cater to
tourists who travel because they
want to maintain or improve their
health.
WELLNESS
Tourism Providers
Beauty Spa
Hotels/Resorts
Lifestyle Resorts
Spiritual Retreats
Before explaining these categories and presenting concrete, illustrative examples in section
4.1, it needs to be acknowledged that there is an overlap between medical and wellness
tourism, creating three additional types of health or ‘Medical Wellness’ tourism suppliers: (1)
So-called ‘Medispas’, where alternative therapies are offered beside medical treatments such
as Botox injections or liposuction and the line between true health promotion and the
correction of physical ‘problems’ or ailments becomes blurred; (2) Traditional European spas
where spa therapies are perceived as mainstream medicine and therefore subsidised by
national health insurance schemes as well as receiving ‘patients’ with physical ailments; (3)
Therapeutic Recreation/Therapeutic Rehabilitation facilities which offer holistic and
alternative wellness therapies and counselling to support people with serious illnesses or to
rehabilitate individuals with addictions or other psychological disorders. The major focus of
this paper, however, lies on the three core categories of wellness tourism providers.
Bringing together the demand as well as the supply side, wellness tourism can be defined as
the sum of all the relationships resulting from a journey by people whose primary motive is to
maintain or promote their health and well-being and who stay at least one night at a facility
that is specifically designed to enable and enhance people’s physical, psychological, spiritual
and/or social well-being (Voigt, 2008).