Health and Wellness Tourism

Name of the Course-PG Diploma in Tourism Part-I (First year)

Name of the Paper- Tourism: Its Anatomy, History, Geography, Philosophy and Sociology

Topic of Discussion- Health and Wellness Tourism

Contents:

• Introduction of Health and Wellness Tourism

• Typology of Health Tourism

• Definition and characteristics of Health Tourism

• Definition of wellness tourism and various forms of Wellness Tourism

Introduction of Health and Wellness Tourism

India is very rich and prosperous in terms of plethora of tourism products.

Its rich and prosperous culture makes India, one of the best attractive destinations of the world. What we live is our culture, in culture we include values, beliefs, traditions, innovations, music, science, art, medical music, dance, life style, mythology, literature, sculpture, architecture and many more things directly and indirectly related to human life. Medical, Health and wellness are the key components of culture. With the increasing industrialisation and urbanisation, concern for health has also increased.

Now a day’s people are much more concerned for their health. Health and wellness tourism is one of the fastest growing segment of global tourism industry. If we talk about India, we have variety of tourism products in this segment of tourism industry, like Yoga, Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani, homoeopathy and other spiritual-wellness products. India has a great potential in health and wellness tourism, after identifying this potential, government of India is now promoting and establishing educational institution in this particular area. Ministry of AYUSH came up with

guidelines related to health and wellness tourism in the year 2015.

Government is encouraging research and education in the field of Yoga, Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Unani, Naturopathy, and Siddha. In 2017, India ranked 12 among the top 20 wellness tourism markets across the globe.

Typology of Health Tourism:-

Definition and characteristics of Health Tourism

Health Tourism- Bennett, King, and Milner (2004) suggest that health tourism involves the following types of voyages:

 Pilgrimages to major rivers for physical and spiritual cleansing;

 Travelling to warmer climates for health reasons;

Cruises which offer specific health treatments

 Government encouragement of the use of local medical services by international visitors;

 ‘Thalassotherapy’ centres;

 ‘Sanitourism’, which involves hospital centres catering not only for the ill, but also offering accommodation, stress reduction programmes and the like to patients’ families;

 Visiting a health resort for health-related activities or medical treatments Health tourism is like an umbrella that covers both medical and wellness tourism.

Both medical and wellness tourism have two different fundamental needs, hence health tourism has an extended interpretation.

Goeldner (1989) suggested three characteristics while defining the health tourism:

1. Staying away from home,

2. Health is most significant motive and 3. Performed in a leisure setting.

4. Mueller and Kaufmann (2001), suggest a distinction between wellness and health tourism. Health tourism is a bigger term; wellness tourism is a subset of health tourism. Wellness tourism is a human travel, seeking experience and betterment related to mind, body and soul. Wellness tourism involves tourists’ activities related to physical, psychological and spiritual well-being at the destination.

5. Wellness tourism is considered as a travel by ‘healthy’ people whose main objective is to restore and promote good health while medical

tourists mostly travel for the treatment of a disease/specific medical condition or ailment.

Forms of Wellness Tourism- The places or venues where wellness tourism could be performed, include hotels, hospitals, clinic, retreats, spa’s, ashrams, resorts, festivals, leisure centres, cruises and resorts.The above mentioned venues may offer the activities and facilities of wellness tourism.

Various forms of Wellness Tourism (excluding Medical Tourism) are as follows:

 Yoga

 Ayurveda Meditation

 Naturopathy

 Reiki

 Homeopathy

 Music Therapy

 Sports / Fitness Training

 Culinary Wellness

 Aroma Therapy

 Sun and Fun Activities

 Spiritual

 Beauty treatment

 Pampering

References-

 Bennett, M., King, B., & Milner, L. (2004). The health resort sector in Australia: A positioning study. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 10(2), 122137.

 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indias-5-leading- Ayurvedadestinations/articleshow/15339457.cms

 https://www.ayurveda.in/

 Mueller, H., & Kaufmann, E. L. (2001). Wellness tourism: Market analysis of a special health tourism segment and implications for the hotel industry. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 7(1), 517

 Wellness Tourism: A Destination Perspective, edited by Cornelia Voigt, Christof Pforr, Routledge Advances in Tourism

 https://mediaindia.eu/tourism/wellness-tourism-destinations-in-india/

 http://ayush.gov.in/

 https://www.tourism-of-india.com/ashrams/

 USAID. (2008). Comprehensive development plan: Jermuk as a destination spa &

winter tourism center. Volume 1 — Core Strategy