Volume 7, Issue 1

Health tourism and other segments in tourism focussing on health issues are widely considered as a growth market. Drivers for this growth and the related future potentials may derive from framework conditions within the German society. The paper tries to identify trends with respect to health oriented vacation forms within the German holiday travel demand. Based on the annual survey “Reiseanalyse”, empirical data on motivation, preferences and factual behavior are presented. The results do not reveal an upward trend in the past and do not indicate a growth of the segment in the future. Possible underlying reasons for these findings are discussed.

Health tourism is a rather broad concept that spans from wellness tourism to medical tourism and destinations for that matter differ greatly in their specific health tourism characteristics from a supply but also a demand perspective. Focusing on medical tourism, it is proposed in this paper that these differences can, at least in parts, be explained by marked differences in a country’s health care system. Two very different health tourism destinations, Germany and Australia, are presented to support this argument.

This paper aims to discuss the relevance of workplace health promotion for health tourism. First, important terms such as health and medical tourism are discussed and differences between them are described. Second, the essentials of workplace health promotion are presented by focusing on tools and measures. Then, offsite workplace health promotion programs are clustered and analyzed in order to evaluate if they might become a health tourism product. The paper concludes with strategic considerations and a discussion.

Quality initiatives at federal state level represent the creation of networks of heterogeneous and complementary single brands and achievement bearers who are to be understood as a further development of the resource-based view. With the quality initiative „vital vacation in Saxony“ pursues the land marketing society of Saxony the aim to reach a unique positioning of the product line in the hard fought health market and wellness market of the federal states and the various quality seal. Before this background the contribution is designed to grasp the network activities and to arrange as well as to derive symbioses and synergies.

This article focuses on health tourism in a regional context. Selected results from the WelDest-research will be presented as well recent market developments. A case from Croatia will outline the realization of health tourism in a regional context. The results show that tourist regions increasingly discover health as a market chance and develop it versatile in practical use. The consumer needs in health and wellbeing regions comprise of varied wellbeing and health promoting facilities as well in spa hotels as in pristine environment.