At the 2019 Annual Spa and Spa Tourism Congress, Mike Wallace (see short bio at the end of the article), presented the factors that determine success in a hot springs spa destination. Most of the ideas can also be applied to wellness destinations and balneare.

At the end of the article is the video of the presentation.

A short selection of the main ideas from the presentation (but we suggest you to watch the presentation (22 minutes) as you will discover many more):

For a spa destination to be successful, you need:

•  very strong leadership,
• a clear vision,
• a clear strategy to ensure good product development,
•  effective marketing
• the ability to build valuable relationships

To outline a clear strategy, you need to ask yourself a few questions key questions:

- who are the customers and why do they come? What do they want? What will they need in the future?

- Why do people come to our destination and what do they want when they return?

- Who will be the guests in the future? Because today's guests will not tomorrow's guests

- What type of guests? Upper / lower class?

- Do you appeal to a generation: younger/older/traditional/fashionable/a single couple or families with young children?

According to a survey, clients said they came for their health, the scenery, the image of the destination and the accommodation. But in reality, what they wanted when they got there, they were:

• passive treatments, most of which are designed for relaxation,
• not to make too much effort
• to have a little activity outside.

Hot springs spa destination: the challenges

Three main challenges for spa destinations, according to statistics:

• marketing effective,
• funding campaigns and
• obtaining support from the public sector.

In marketing how you present yourself is very important. We also have:

• changing trends,
• older customer segment (Senior market)
• how to incorporate wellness into a spa destination.

The old health tourism scheme as organizational structure comprised:

• Spa tourism on the one hand,
• wellness and prevention on the other,
• and then you have rehab, post-op recovery.

But today, even hospitals and clinics offer services such as meditation, massage, hypnosis therapy and incorporates wellness.

So this old model or this old structure is no longer relevant today.
So you used to put:

•  diagnostics in a building,
• operations in another,
• one wellness and then more alternative therapies.

Things have changed: Wellness isn't just a pretty lady with a flower in her jacuzzi. It's a bit more complicated: it's a life process.

You can't just go to a hotel for a weekend to get some therapy spa and feel fantastic.

Wellness is now everywhere. In every city there is some form of wellness, be it yoga, fitness and nutrition classes. You don't have to travel now to get wellness, so to be successful, you need to offer something different that will really attract people. So if you're going to offer yoga, it must be something more interesting. So things become much more diverse, much more interesting.

Spa destination with thermal waters: trends and opportunities

Mental wellness

Integrate into your offer services such as psychology, spirituality, meditation, mental fitness. It's very fashionable now. And it's a trend that I think is here to stay for the long term.

New forms of meditation

have meditation with virtual reality. Find meditation in unique environments, in forests, on surfboards, etc.

Generation of senior customers

It's a big market, growing every year. In Europe there are several million people suffering from: musculoskeletal diseases, diabetes, obesitydepression. These are the main causes of disability in older people. If you can offer treatments spa for these conditions is perfect! But there's a problem: all seniors get sick and die.

So, if you run a medical spa that caters to seniors, it's very important that when the spa is full, that's exactly when you need to aggressively market, because you don't know how many will be alive until next year.
And a lot of themed medical spas don't realize this.

Another growing segment is older, single women.

Being authentic is very important in a thermal spa destination

You can see a few spas in Europe that have managed to be unique, authentic and successful (you can see them in the video, starting at minute 00:16:10). They all come from areas with thermal waters, which means that all the hotels in the area have access to these waters, but they are successful because they have managed to come up with something unique (destinations from Hungary, Austria, Serbia are featured).

Mike Wallace is consultant Medical Spa & Wellness Spa, Hungary

Over 20 years experience in the industry medical tourism, wellness and fitness. With a background in fitness, he worked as regional manager for LivingWell Health Clubs (Hilton) and later for Soho gym in London, UK. In 1999, he moved to Budapest, Hungary to design and set up 7 fitness clubs for Danubius Hotels Group.

For the past 15 years, Michael has been the contracted Consultant Brand Manager and Group Spa Director for Danubius Health Spas Resorts, with responsibility for the operations, business performance and development of 20 of the world's leading spa resorts and spas. relaxation in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic.