Health and Wellness Tourism

Health and wellness tourism is now an international trend set by the health conscious consumers seeking to enhance their well-being through their travel experiences. Wellness tourism is travel for the purpose of promoting health and well-being through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities. While wellness tourism is often correlated with medical tourism because health interests motivate the traveler, wellness tourists are proactive in seeking to improve or maintain health and quality of life, often focusing on prevention, while medical tourists generally travel reactively to receive treatment for a diagnosed disease or condition. Wellness travelers pursue diverse services, including physical fitness and sports; beauty treatments; healthy diet and weight management; relaxation and stress relief; meditation; yoga; and health-related education. Wellness travelers may seek procedures or treatments using conventional, alternative, complementary, herbal, or homeopathic medicine. This type of consumer seeks to look and feel better, to lose weight, to slow the effects of aging, to relieve pain or discomfort, to manage stress, or to partake in the use of natural supplements like vitamins and minerals to improve their health. Resorts and hotels are joining the health spa development craze, although only some resorts are moving into the scope of services currently offered by destination spas. Likewise, a growing number of day spas are adding health and wellness programming options. Health tourism refers to those clients with medical conditions who would travel to experience healing therapies. A person who seeks a wellness travel experience, is generally healthy to start with, and seeks therapies to maintain his or her well-being. The spa industry segment is regarded as the leading player in health and wellness tourism. The book Health and Wellness Tourism offers most comprehensive topics on health and wellness tourism within the travel industry.