Wellness Tourism

A Destination Perspective

Cornelia Voigt, Christof Pforr, Cornelia Voigt, Christof Pforr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415644679
• eBook ISBN: 9781136162121
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Core values of society, health and wellbeing impact today on all aspects of our lives, and have also increasingly influenced patterns of tourism consumption and production. In this context wellness has developed into a significant dimension of tourism in a number of new and long established destinations. However, although it is consistently referred to as one of the most rapidly growing forms of tourism worldwide there still remains a dearth of academic literature on this topic.

This book uniquely focuses on the supply side of wellness tourism from a destination perspective in terms of the generation and delivery of products and services for tourists who seek to maintain and improve their health. This approach provides a better understanding of how wellness tourism destinations develop and explores the specific drivers of that growth in a destination context and how destinations successfully compete against each other in globalised market place. A range of wellness destination development and management issues are examined including the importance of authenticity, an appropriate policy framework, delivery of high quality goods and services, participation of a broad range of stakeholders and the development of networks and clusters as well as collaborative strategies essential for a successful development and management of a wellness tourism destination. International case studies and examples from established and new wellness tourism destinations are integrated throughout.

This timely volume written by leaders in this sector will be of interest to tourism and hospitality students and academics internationally.

Part I

Introduction

1 Wellness tourism from a destination perspective

Why now?

Cornelia Voigt and Christof Pforr

The growth of wellness tourism

As core values of societies throughout the world, health and wellbeing have steadily become essential factors shaping all areas of people’s lives and have also increasingly influenced patterns of consumption and production. Wellness tourism constitutes one part of an explosively growing, largely private market of health goods and services, frequently referred to as the wellness industry (Kickbusch and Payne 2003; Pilzer 2007). Trend researchers consistently predict health and wellness to be crucial, if not the most important, drivers for successful business growth and major innovations in the future. For instance, Nefiodow (2006) argues that holistic health will be the new megamarket of the twenty-first century. Similarly, Pilzer (2007), speaking of a wellness revolution, estimates that the wellness industry has grown to sales of over $500 billion in the United States alone, but still suggests the industry is just in its infancy. He specifically contrasts the wellness industry with traditional health care, which he thinks should be more appropriately called sickness care or sickness industry. Yeoman (2008: 91) refers to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) prediction that health will be the world’s biggest industry by 2022 and posits that health and tourism will constitute the largest sectors globally, together building ‘an unbeatable consumer force’.

These forecasts set the scene for the current popularity of wellness tourism and explain why it is repeatedly cited as one of the fastest growing tourism niche markets. Thereby it is important to emphasise that we concur with those scholars who have differentiated wellness and medical tourism as fundamentally different segments of health tourism (e.g. Connell 2011; Müller and Lanz Kaufmann 2001; Puczkó and Bachvarov 2006). These differences arise because medical tourism is firmly grounded in the biomedical paradigm of health, where the emphasis lies on the treatment or cure of diseases, whereas wellness tourism is guided by an alternative approach to health, where the focus is on the promotion of health and wellbeing and where a balance and holistic integration of multiple health dimensions (e.g. body/mind/spirit, environmental, social), active self-responsibility, healthy lifestyles, subjectivity and actualisation of human potential play major roles. Moreover, wellness and medical tourism cater to contrasting needs of tourists and thus different tourist markets, they offer essentially different types of services, they are typically set in locations with very different characteristics and they employ staff from very different source pools (see Chapter 2, this volume for a more detailed explanation and definition of wellness tourism). Nevertheless, both wellness and medical tourism are spreading to all corners of the globe and scholars have noted a constant diversification in supply, some forms of hybridisation, as well as a significant specialisation of target markets (Gustavo 2010; Voigt and Laing 2013; Yeoman 2008).

Due to a lack of consistency in health or wellness tourism definitions as well as a general lack of available data, it is impossible to report reliable figures on global size, scope or economic significance of wellness tourism. However, there are other indicators that reflect and substantiate the growth of wellness tourism. Recently an increased professionalisation of the wellness tourism industry has been noticeable in form of a mounting number of industry associations and in form of university and college subjects or even entire degrees dealing with wellness and spa tourism management. For instance, the online directory Spa Opportunities lists over 800 institutions worldwide which offer educational courses in this area and the Global Spa and Wellness Summit (2012) specifically refers to more than 60 universities, universities of applied sciences and polytechnic colleges where wellness and/or spa tourism is being taught. Another indicator is the continuous creation of relevant consumer magazines such as Spa Secrets, Healing Lifestyles and Spas, Organic Spa Magazine or Spa Asia, where thus far the spa sector clearly dominates, as well as the emergence of more and more print and online directories such as Spa Finder, RELAX Guide, Retreat Finder, Find The Divine, Healing Hotels of the World and New Life Hotels, with each directory specialising on specific wellness tourist markets. Another sign of wellness tourism’s growth is that an increasing number of tourism destinations are developing or reinventing themselves as wellness tourism destinations. Before discussing wellness tourism destinations and the related purpose of this book, the next section provides a brief overview of megatrends that have contributed to the recent growth of wellness tourism.

Megatrends contributing to wellness tourism growth

Megatrends constitute epochal processes of transformation. Their defining characteristics include that they have a half-life of at least 50 years, that they are apparent in all areas of life (e.g. everyday life, economy, politics, consumption) and, although they do not have to be equally developed all over the world, that they represent a truly global phenomenon (Horx 2010). In the following, six megatrends are listed that have driven the rise of wellness tourism supply and demand.

1 Holistic health and increased health consciousness

Since the 1960s consumers are largely responsible for the foray into a new, more holistic and positive understanding of health, a consumer movement which is often referred to as holistic health or wellness movement. Nowadays infectious diseases have been replaced as major causes of death by chronic and lifestyle-related illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, but conventional health care has proven to be largely ineffective in managing or preventing these. Mounting scepticism towards the effectiveness of orthodox health-care services has motivated an ever-increasing amount of people in the West to turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), not necessarily as a substitute, but as an augmentation (Eisenberg et al. 1998; Yeoman 2008). From the beginning the holistic health movement drew heavily on non-Western healing systems and globalisation and large-scale migration have facilitated their dissemination and acceptance. At the same time individuals are no longer passive recipients of health care, they have become more informed and educated about their own health and the availability of contrasting health-care options. Thus, at least for those who can afford it, health care has become pluralistic and more consumer-directed. They have become more health conscious and accepting in taking responsibility for their wellbeing by living healthier lives. It already has been alluded to that wellness tourism is firmly linked to an alternative, holistic paradigm of health and it has been suggested that healthy lifestyle choices are the fundamental basis for wellness tourism demand (Hall and Brown 2006).

2 Pace of life acceleration

Ever since the industrial revolution, when clock time rather than natural time started to dictate daily schedules and new technologies produced profound changes in how work was organised, the pace of life has increasingly accelerated. Nowadays, life is often compared to a rat race, where individuals have little choice than to hurry from one appointment and activity to the next with one eye always on the clock. Additionally, employees all over the world report increased workloads and greater day-to-day pressures which result in a notable rise of stress-related disorders such as emotional strain (e.g. tension, fatigue, aggression) or psychological diseases (e.g. depression, burnout, anxiety). Wellness tourism has been suggested as an ideal outlet to escape from daily stressors and a profound means to relax and recuperate (Pollock and Williams 2000) and motivational items such relaxation, stress release, escape and reward for working hard have been found to rank highly in Western and Eastern groups of wellness tourists (Mak et al. 2009; Voigt et al. 2010).

3 Inconspicuous consumption

One could argue that the more people’s lives have become more fast-paced, more materialistic, rationalised and technical, the more consumer movements have emerged which represent a counterbalance and a broad shift in consumer values. These movements could all be gathered under the inconspicuous consumption banner. Wellness tourism has been linked to such movements where people decide voluntarily to move out the fast lane by simplifying their lives and by trading high incomes for more time and increased quality of life. Labels that have been given to those movements range from voluntary simplicity, simple living, and downshifting to Slow Movement (Honoré 2004; Smith and Puczkó 2009). Concurrently, Yeoman (2008) argues that tourists increasingly reinterpret the concept of luxury as one of having time to have experiences of personal fulfilment instead of engaging in conspicuous consumption and showing off materialistic status symbols. In other words, ostentatious decadence is out, modesty and simplicity are in. Another consumer movement that has been linked to wellness tourists is the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) movement, a term which was only invented in 1999. LOHAS is a new form of lifestyle in which people not only take into consideration their own personal health, but the health of the environment, the community and social justice when making consumption-related decisions. The eco-social added value of products and services is becoming important and people are increasingly prepared to invest in fair, green, organic and sustainable goods. Consumer research in Western and Eastern countries shows that LOHAS values are progressively becoming mainstream, rather than fringe.

4 Individualisation

In the West, the idea of individualism has become ever-more pervasive. In regard to consumptive practices this means that people increasingly seek out products that express their individuality, they eschew mass consumption and homogenisation and demand personalised and customised goods and services instead. While it has been argued that tourism has generally turned away from mass tourism in favour of independent travel and niche tourism, wellness tourism in particular has been linked to a focus on the self. It has been noted that holistic wellness tourists seek to find their true selves and that the self or the quest to be become more important than external tourism attractions and activities (Smith and Kelly 2006a). Similarly, in a study of actual benefits sought by wellness tourists it was found that transformation of the self was the central, unifying leitmotif (Voigt et al. 2010). The German trend researcher Matthias Horx (2005) refers to selfness as the next big megatrend after wellness. Selfness is described as a technique of self-development, a discovery of one’s true self and a continuous process of developing one’s own potential. Importantly, here, selfness is not equated with selfishness. Horx relates selfness to the concept of soft individualism where values such as experience, tolerance, gratefulness, dedication and spiritualty have replaced values such as materialism, me as number one, and performance that were predominant in the ego era which reigned from the late 1970s until the 1990s (Horx 2005: 40–4). Others, however, have also linked wellness tourism to an obsession with the outer self, a sometimes unhealthy preoccupation with one’s appearance, self-image and aspiration to look like supermodels or celebrities (Smith and Puczkó 2009; Yeoman 2008).

5 Quest for spirituality

According to the American trend researcher Patricia Aburdene (2007), the quest for spirituality is the greatest megatrend in the twenty-first century. Although there has been a decrease in religion, the yearning for spirituality and meaning in life has not diminished. The longing for spirituality has led to the popularity of Eastern spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation, self-help books and pop psychology as well as the New Age movement which is often directly linked to wellness and holistic health (Aburdene 2007; Smith and Puczkó 2009; Miller 2005). In this book we propose that spiritual retreats (often taking place at mediation or yoga centres, ashrams, monasteries or temples) are an integral, but often neglected, part of wellness tourism (see Chapter 2). Furthermore, Aburdene argues that the impact of spirituality on personal lives is currently spreading into institutions. Specifically from a business point of view she foresees the rise of a so-called conscious capitalism where there will be a shift away from greed and profit-making at all costs toward a new economy founded on spiritual awareness, ethics and morals, including environmental values and corporate responsibility. She emphasises that this transformation will not be a sign of altruism, but one of enlightened self-interest, because consciously capitalist companies will outperform their competition in the long run.

6 Ageing populations

Due the combination of longer life expectancies and falling birth rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per couple, the world’s population is ageing. The group that currently drives population ageing is called Baby Boomer generation and consists of individuals born between 1944 and 1965. In comparison with seniors of previous generations, Baby Boomers are generally more affluent, healthier and fitter and also more concerned to stay in good health. Although studies have shown that Baby Boomers do not always constitute the majority of all wellness tourists in all sub-segments or in all countries, and that some markets are considerably younger (Mak et al. 2009; Voigt et al. 2010), Baby Boomers are frequently cited as one factor responsible for the increased demand of wellness and medical tourism products (Pollock and Williams 2000; Smith and Kelly 2006b; Yeoman 2008).

Focus of this book: a destination perspective on wellness tourism

The aim of this book is to present an overview and discussion of key trends and critical issues pertaining to the development and management of wellness tourism destinations from a variety of different perspectives. From a theoretical standpoint the general question can be posed whether the growth of wellness tourism has also resulted in a growing body of academic literature dealing with this phenomenon. While Hall (2011: 4) suggests that health tourism has ‘emerged as one of the fastest growing areas of academic research interest in both tourism and health studies’, a close look at the existing literature reveals that health tourism tends to be equated with medical tourism and even though medical tourism is largely driven by private, conventional health care providers rather than the tourism industry, it is actually medical tourism which has received the biggest share of academic interest among scholars. In contrast, the tourism industry is much more involved in the provision of wellness tourism. Despite this and the coupled increasing popularity and demand for wellness tourism experiences it is still treated as a Cinderella subject and there remains a dearth of academic literature on this topic. Moreover, if wellness tourism is discussed as part of health tourism or even if it is specifically highlighted as the main focus, it is often reduced to spa o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Routledge advances in tourism
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introduction
• Part II The role of stakeholders in wellness tourism destinations
• Part III Relationships between nature, wellbeing and destinations
• Part IV Drivers of wellness tourism development International experiences
• Part V Conclusion
• Index