Health and wellness Tourism in the pursuit of quality of life: A case study approach for Portugal and Hungary

Abstract

The health and wellness tourism sector is one of the most dynamic in Europe and has experienced a significant worldwide increase in the last decades. It emerges as a key element of lifestyle, due to a set of circumstances and restrictions imposed by contemporary life. In this sense, health and wellness activities may be revealed as a means capable of satisfying the needs of the consumers, that constitute the modern wellness tourists. Although the pandemic of COVID-19 may have an impact on individuals' visits to health and well-being destinations, it may, on the other hand, contribute to an increase in health concerns, both from the perspective of cure and prevention, supported by a continuous search to raise QoL levels. The aim of this study is to identify the contribution of health tourism to the quality of life of the demand, identifying the satisfaction levels on its' different dimensions, and presents the results of a comparative study developed in Thermal Spas in Portugal and in Hungary, providing theoretical and practical contributions to this research field.