1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Health Tourism
The Routledge Handbook of Health Tourism provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the philosophical, conceptual and managerial issues in the field of health tourism with contributions from more than 30 expert academics and practitioners from around the world. Terms that are used frequently when defining health tourism, such as wellbeing, wellness, holistic, medical and spiritual, are analysed and explored, as is the role that health and health tourism play in quality-of-life enhancement, wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness. An overview is provided of health tourism facilities such as thermal waters, spas, retreats and wellness hotels and the various challenges inherent in managing these profitably and sustainably. Typologies are given not only of subsectors of health tourism and related activities but also of destinations, such as natural landscapes, historic townscapes or individual resources or attractions around which whole infrastructures have been developed. Attention is paid to some of the lifestyle changes that are taking place in societies which influence consumer behaviour, motivations and demand for health tourism, including government policies, regulations and ethical considerations.
This significant volume offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking and research. The text is international in focus, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study and will be an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in health tourism.
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Contributors
Foreword
1. Introduction
Section One: History and Trends
2. History of Spa Tourism: Spirituality, Rejuvenation and Socialisation
Warwick Frost and Jennifer Laing
3. An Overview of Lifestyle Trends and their Impacts on Health Tourism
Melanie Kay Smith
4. Leading Taste: The Influence of Trendsetters on Health Tourism
Jennifer Laing and Warwick Frost
Section Two: Happiness, Wellbeing and Quality of Life
5. Between Tourists: Tourism and Happiness
Ondrej Mitas, Jeroen Nawijn and Barbara Jongsma
6. The Impact of Tourist Activities on Tourists' Subjective Wellbeing
Muzaffer Uysal, M. Joseph Sirgy, Eunju Woo and Hyelin (Lina) Kim
7. Finding Flow during a Vacation: Using Optimal Experiences to Improve Health
John K. Coffey and Mihály Csikszentmihályi
Section Three: Health, Tourism and Society
8. Healthy Tourism
Robyn Bushell
9. Social Tourism and Health
Scott McCabe and Anya Diekmann
10. A Life-Course Analysis of Older Tourists and their Changing Patterns of Holiday Behavior
Gareth Shaw, Isabelle Cloquet, Paul Cleave, Andrzej Tucki, Maria João F. Custódio, and Alessandra Theuma
Section Four: Holistic Wellbeing
11. The Psychology of Spa: the Science of ’Holistic’ Wellbeing
Jeremy McCarthy
12. Journeys of the Self: The Need to Retreat
Catherine Kelly and Melanie Kay Smith
13. Community as Holistic Healer on Health Holiday Retreats: The Case of Skyros
Dina Glouberman and Josée Cloutier
14. Yoga, Transformation and Tourism
Melanie Kay Smith and Ivett Sziva
Section Five: Medical Tourism: Ethics, Regulation and Policy
15. The Ethics of Medical Travel
David Reisman
16. The Environmental Externalities of Medical and Health Tourism: Implications for Global Public Health
Colin Michael Hall
17. Legal and Ethical Issues of Cross-Border Reproductive Care from an EU Perspective
Markus Frischhut
18. The Need to Professionalize Estheticians
Kathryn Gallagher and Marion Joppe
Section Six: Medical Tourism: Products and Services
19. Choosing the Good Hospital: Helping Medical Tourists Make Informed Decisions
Sharon Kleefield
20. Medical Hotels – an Approach to Sustainable Health in the Leisure Industry
Kai Illing
21. A Disney Strategic Approach to Patient/Guest Services in Hospitality Bridging Healthcare (H2H) and Medical Tourism and Wellness
Frederick J. DeMicco
22. Balneology and Health Tourism
Melanie Kay Smith and László Puczkó
Section Seven: Health Destination Development and Management
23. Enhancing the Competitiveness of a Wellness Tourism Destination by Coordinating the Multiple Actor Collaboration
Telle Tuominen, Susanna Saari and Daniel Binder
24. Cross-Border Health Tourism Collaborations: Opportunities and Challenges
Henna Konu and Melanie Smith
25. Destination and Product Development Rested on Evidence-based Health Tourism
Georg Christian Steckenbauer, Stephanie Tischler, Arnulf Hartl and Christina Pichler
26. Developing a Wellness Destination: A Case Study of the Peak District
Sarah Rawlinson and Peter Wiltshier
Section Eight: Therapeutic and Healing Landscapes
27. ’Places of Power’: Can individual ’sacred space’ help regain orientation in a confusing world
Harald A. Friedl
28. Rhythmic revitalisations: Attuning to nature for health and wellbeing
Edward H. Huijbens
29. Relationships between emotion regulation seeking, program satisfaction, attention restoration, and life satisfaction: Healing program participants
Timothy J. Lee and Jinok Susanna Kim
30. Health Tourism and Health Promotion at the Coast
Peter Kruizinga
Section Nine: Nature, Health and Tourism
31. Rural Wellbeing Tourism Destinations – Demand Side Viewpoint
Juho Pesonen and Anja Tuohino
32. Protected natural areas as innovative health tourism destinations
Sonia Ferrari and Monica Gilli
33. Understanding the Links Between Wellness and Indigenous Tourism in Western Canada: Critical Sites of Cultural Exchange
John Hull and Courtney Mason
34. Conclusion
Biography
Melanie Kay Smith is Associate Professor at Budapest Metropolitan University in the School of Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality. She is the co-author of the book Health, Tourism and Hospitality: Spas, Wellness and Medical Travel (Routledge, 2013) with Dr László Puczkó and has worked for over ten years on health tourism, including research, lecturing and the publication of several journal articles and book chapters. She has been an invited keynote speaker at many international conferences, and has undertaken health tourism consultancy work in a range of countries, including for the European Travel Commission and United Nations World Tourism Organization. She has most recently been working on Baltic health tourism and Balkan wellbeing concepts, as well as a European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) project on tourism, wellbeing and ecosystem services. Her most recent teaching and research focus on evidence-based healing resources and therapies.
László Puczkó is the Director of Industry Intelligence at Resources for Leisure Assets and the Head of Tourism and Leisure Knowledge Centre at the Budapest Metropolitan University (Hungary). He has been working as a travel and tourism expert in the health, wellness, medical services and spa arenas for over 20 years. He founded the Tourism Observatory for Health, Wellness and Spa in 2012. He has participated in more than a hundred projects in various fields: research, planning, product development, experience mapping and design, impact assessment and marketing. László is an internationally known and acknowledged expert; he lectures at various international professional and academic conferences and congresses. He is the (co-)author of numerous specialised books (e.g. Health, Tourism and Hospitality (Routledge, 2013), Impacts of Tourism (Häme Polytechnic, 2002)) and articles in professional journals.
