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

category. Of the three core wellness tourism provider categories that include accommodation,
Spa Hotels/Resorts were clearly the majority (35%), followed by Spiritual Retreats (14%) and
Lifestyle Resorts (5%).
The supply of wellness service providers in Australia is distributed differently across the
states. The biggest proportion of all wellness service providers is located in New South Wales
(29%), followed by Victoria (24%) and Queensland (22%), Western Australia (12%), South
Australia (7%), and Tasmania (4%). Only 2% of the businesses are located in the Australian
Capital Territory and 1% in the Northern Territory. Moreover, New South Wales contains the
majority of Spiritual Retreats and Lifestyle resorts, whereas Queensland hosts the highest
proportion of Spa Hotels/Resorts.
Survey Analysis
Business Profile. The basic business profile revealed the proportions of regional versus
metropolitan wellness providers, how long the businesses were operating, their average
number of employees and their distribution channels.
Based on the survey responses, it is also apparent that the majority of wellness providers in
Australia are located in regional areas (72%) rather than in metropolitan areas (28%).
However, there are differences between the types of wellness providers. As expected, day
spas are more likely to be found in metropolitan areas than Spa Hotels/Resorts, Lifestyle
Resorts or Spiritual Retreats (Table 1).
Table 1: Metropolitan versus Regional Distribution of Wellness Tourism Providers and
Day Spas
Wellness Provider Category
Day
Spas
Spa
Hotels/Resorts
Lifestyle
Resorts/Retreats
Spiritual
Retreats
TOTAL
Metropolitan
area
41% 24% 32% 18% 28%
Regional area 59% 76% 68% 82% 72%
The respondents of our survey were asked when their business was established. Almost half
of all businesses (48%) providing wellness services are only five years old or less, which
confirms the youthfulness of the wellness tourism industry in Australia. Of all wellness
tourism provider categories, Spiritual Retreats tend to have been established longer than the
other types (59% of spiritual retreats have been in business for more than 11 years versus 21%
Spa Hotels/Resorts and 16% Lifestyle Resorts).
The size of wellness tourism facilities can differ substantially, which is mirrored by the
number of full-time staff a business employs. Fourteen respondents of our survey only
employed one full-time staff, and only nine businesses employed 20 full-time staff or more.
The highest number of full-time staff employed by a Lifestyle Resort was 105. Table 2 shows
the average number of full-time staff across the different wellness provider categories and
categorised as metropolitan or regional. Lifestyle Resorts tend to employ the highest number
of full-time staff. This is attributed to the fact that they usually provide a range of different
services that require the employment of specialists (e.g. nutritionists, fitness trainers,
beauticians, massage therapists, nurses). Spiritual Retreats tend to employ the lowest number
of full-time staff. In general, wellness service providers employed more staff in regional areas
than in metropolitan areas.