Brand and Competitiveness in Health and Wellness Tourism

Eleonora Santos (), Cátia Crespo, Jacinta Moreira and Rui Alexandre Castanho
Additional contact information
Eleonora Santos: Polytechnic Institute of Leiria
Cátia Crespo: Polytechnic Institute of Leiria
Jacinta Moreira: Polytechnic Institute of Leiria
Rui Alexandre Castanho: WSB University

A chapter in Tourism, Travel, and Hospitality in a Smart and Sustainable World, 2023, pp 707-721 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Health and wellness tourism is growing worldwide, triggering a resurgence of competition in this segment and a clear need for the supply to develop new products and services, increasingly creative and exclusive, capable of attracting tourists. Thermal waters in Portugal are considered very rich in terms of chemical composition, which makes their use highly important in various wellness and rejuvenating therapies like balneotherapy, thermalism, etc. This enables the country to pursue a differentiated wellness-related experience product, which is a key determinant of customer loyalty and can play an important role in regional development. Natural resources contribute to the strengths of territories and can be leveraged by marketing tools such as brands. This article intends to draw inferences about the effect of the brand on the competitiveness of the wellness tourism supply, across NUTS II regions of the continent, during the period of ten years, with a special focus on the recent period of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a sample of 10 spas in Portugal, retrieved from SABI database, we analyze the evolution of four competitiveness indicators: market share, productivity, return on investment and talent retention, for 2010–2020, by clusters of firms with and without brand. The correlation analysis between brand and competitiveness indicators suggests a strong positive and significant relationship between brand and market share, in the Centro and Lisbon regions, starting in 2017 and increasing over time. Finally, some recommendations on tourism management are made to improve the competitiveness of the supply.

Keywords: Health and wellness tourism; Regional policy; Tourism management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-031-26829-8_44

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031268298

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-26829-8_44

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().