Who are the wellness travelers?

Abstract

Medical tourism has started to receive more attention from tourism marketers and researchers but wellness tourism remains relatively unfamiliar to most people. This concept of wellness tourism has bred a special niche of hotels - wellness hotels. Such hotels are specialized hotels which provide professional health know-how and health packages/services to their guests. This paper therefore seeks to conduct an exploratory study in wellness-hotel visitors by performing a market segmentation analysis. By identifying the different market segments existing in this industry, marketing strategies can be made more focused, further refined, and consequently, more effective. Based on the systematic random sample of size 184 and the 10 identified variables, the result of the cluster analysis reveals that there are three clusters, namely, independent, undemanding, and demanding guests. Managerial implications are also discussed. Copyright © 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.