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

Methods
To understand the Australian supply-side and structure of wellness tourism, a range of
methods were employed, including secondary data analyses, stakeholder interviews and five
detailed cases studies. The interviews with the stakeholders and the interviews conducted for
the cases studies included site visits in all Australian states with the exception of the Northern
Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. A final method, most relevant for
this paper, consisted of a mail-out survey which was based on an audit of Australian wellness
tourism providers which produced a database of 590 businesses.
Sampling Frame. The definition of wellness tourism applied in this research deliberately
incorporates the limitation of “to stay at least one night at a facility”. Therefore, the main
emphasis during the audit was to achieve as complete a census as possible of businesses that
included or were attached to accommodation facilities. It was assumed that providers with
accommodation would receive a higher proportion of tourists than local residents in
comparison to establishments without accommodation. Nevertheless, a number of day spas
(although less than a census) were also included in our sampling frame, based on an
acknowledgment that some tourists visit these facilities while on vacation. This was important
to gain a broad snapshot of the Australian wellness tourism industry.
The sampling frame was established on the basis of a database of suppliers provided by the
Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW). The database included all suppliers listed by
the ATDW where the experiences field included ‘health and wellbeing’. The database was
subsequently reviewed by two research team members, with out of scope records removed
(e.g. businesses that provide a spa bath in their rooms but do not offer any other health and
wellness tourism services, or duplicates), which substantially reduced this database. The
database was then crosschecked against other sources, such as Sensis Yellow and White
Pages, online directories (e.g. SpaFinder) and private records of the research team, to include
additional providers in the database.
Survey Instrument. A self-completion mail-out questionnaire was developed that included
questions in regard to the nature of the service offerings; the business profile including year of
establishment, staffing; and promotion strategies and distribution.
Data Collection Procedure. Before the survey was mailed out, each of the 590 wellness
providers was contacted by telephone and the name of an appropriate manager was identified
and recorded in the database. This enabled the research team to produce personalised
introduction letters. These letters, together with a hard copy of the questionnaire and a reply
paid envelope were sent to every wellness provider listed in the newly created supply data
base. A tracking serial number was printed on the reply paid envelope and responses were
recorded in the supply data base. The envelope was then discarded and the serial number was
not attached to individual questionnaire records. Two reminder letters after four and after
eight weeks were posted to non-respondents. A total of 156 responses were received by the
closing date of the survey, representing a response rate of 25 percent.
Data Analysis. The survey data was captured electronically and set up as an SPSS (Version
17) data file. The data was initially inspected through frequency count and cross-tabulation to
check for range validity and logical consistency. After deleting four questionnaires due to
missing data, we had responses from managers of 68 Beauty Spa Hotels/Resorts, 37 Day
Spas, 27 Lifestyle Resorts and 22 Spiritual Retreats. The data set was then analysed by
frequency count, cross-tabulation and the calculation of means.