Tourists’ Satisfaction with Products, Services and Quality Development of Hot Spring Wellness Tourism
Abstract
Geothermal springs create the main tourism resource, offering remarkable sceneries, recreation facilities, and recognized value in treatments for health and wellness. The rapid growth of wellness tourism in Thailand, as well as hot spring tourism as one of the types of wellness tourism, which attracts domestic and international travelers to visit annually for a holiday activity. In this paper, the researcher reported tourists’ satisfaction with products, services, and quality development of hot spring wellness tourism at Doi Saket, Thailand. This research aimed to (1) study tourists’ satisfaction with the service products and service processes at the hot spring destination at Doi Saket, and (2) assess the quality development of the service providers at the hot spring destination in terms of creativity and uniqueness in health promotion. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used for data collection. The participants were 200 tourism stakeholders selected by purposive sampling; they were from the private sector, the public sector, the community concerned, and tourists visiting the hot spring destination at Doi Saket. As for data collection, the researcher used in-depth interview, participatory observation, focus group, participatory rural appraisal techniques to collect qualitative data, and a field survey on tourists’ satisfaction with the products and services to obtain quantitative data. The obtained qualitative data were analyzed by content and frequency, whereas the quantitative data by percentage, means, and t-test. The results pointed to (1) the tourists’ overall satisfaction with the hot spring service providers at a high level regarding environmental management as well as service process management; and 2) the tourism stakeholders wish to see a higher level of quality development for tourism products and services in terms of uniqueness in health promotion activities.
