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

Health and Spa Tourism Business: Tourists’ Profiles and Motivational
Factors
Inoormaziah Azman
Postgraduate Centre
inoora83@hotmail.com
And
Jennifer Kim Lian Chan
School of Business and Economics,
University Malaysia Sabah (UMS),
88450, Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah, Malaysia
E-mail: jkimchan@yahoo.co.uk; jenniferchan@ums.edu.my
Abstract
Health and spa tourism has increasingly become an important economic and marketing
strategy for hoteliers, resorts and tourist destinations to attract tourist visitations. Despite the
fast expansion and popular demand of health and spa services/activities by both local and
international tourists, there is little understanding of the spa and wellness consumers in the
Malaysian context. It argues that a deep understanding of consumer profiles and their key
motivations within this context is vital in order to sustain the growth of health and spa tourism
business. The paper presents a preliminary pioneering exploratory qualitative study that seeks
to understand the spa and wellness tourists’ motivation that are grounded in their own words
during their visits to spa and wellness service centers in Sabah, Malaysia. It reports the
empirical findings of spa and wellness tourists’ motivation by extending the push-pull
motivation theory that focuses on the individual’s psychological factors (motivation,
perception and attitude towards spa and wellness) and the destination’s (Sabah’s) spa and
wellness attributes. Data collection was conducted using in-depth interviews with 15 foreign
tourists in various health and spa service centres in Sabah, Malaysia. It reveals that the retired
aged group is the main category of tourists who go for health and spa services followed by the
professionals who are very health conscious and practice healthy lifestyle. The findings
revealed that health and spa tourist motivation is largely attributed to personal needs and
lifestyles, the price and the functionality/performance of health and spa service providers in
Sabah. The paper provides the broad understanding of health and spa tourists’ profiles in
Sabah, Malaysia and the key motivation factors. The finding benefits the health and spa
service providers in term of developing appropriate marketing strategies and enhanced tourist
satisfaction. The nature of the exploratory study and the type of respondent (foreign tourists)
limit the generalizability of the research findings.
Key words: health and spa, tourist profiles, motivation factors, tourist lifestyle, marketing
strategies for health and spa business
Introduction