Spa and Wellness Tourism in Slovakia (A Geographical Analysis)

Abstract

Spa industry is presently an inherent part of Slovak tourism. For this reason, it has become a major interest of scientific and professional literature (economics, management, sociology, or geography). The main topic of this paper is the evaluation of tourism in Slovakia through a geographic analysis. This paper briefly evaluates the development and the importance of spa, spa tourism and wellness and their main research areas and issues. Furthermore, the primary sources of tourism development, the overview of spa tourism and the wellness resorts, the accommodation establishments and the visitation rate are evaluated as well. In conclusion, functional and spatial typification of spa tourism and wellness in Slovakia is presented. The structure of the paper is designed to be appropriate for a comparison with V4 countries.

Changes in the structure of the tourist function in Kujawy spas (based on the volume and structure of tourist traffic)

“…This process has been indicated by many authors (Durydiwka, 2005;Groch, 1991;Jagusiewicz, 1998Jagusiewicz, , 2006Kowalczyk, 2001Kowalczyk, , 2005Krasiński, 2004;Łęcka, 2005;Madeyski, 1997;Mika, 2005;Mika, Ptaszycka-Jackowska, 2007;Mościbroda, 2005;Ptaszycka-Jackowska, 1999;Rydz, 2005Rydz, , 2012Rzeńca, 1997;Szromek, 2010Szromek, , 2012Szromek, , 2018Widawski, 2017, etc.). Although it is similar to a process observed in other countries as well (Buzsik, Jónás-Berki, Köbli, Pálfi, 2015;Joppe, 2010;Kasagranda, Gurňák, 2017;Mainil, Eijgelaar, Klijs, Nawijn, Peeters, 2017;Vystoupul, Šauer, Bobková, 2017, etc. ), it is difficult to verify in an academic way as such verification is often based on a description of the relations between the curative and the other tourism functions of spas.…”

Spa tourism in the Slovak Republic

“…The average length of stay of domestic clients was 8.91 days and of foreigners 6.65 days. An analysis of the accommodation infrastructure, clientele, selected indicators in the previous period (Mitríková et al, 2017) and functionally-spatial typology of spa and wellness tourist resorts is presented by Kasagranda and Gurňák (2017). The data from the National Health Information Centre (2020) given in Table 1 point out several facts.…”

Zmiany w strukturze funkcji turystycznej w uzdrowiskach kujawskich (na podstawie wielkości i struktury ruchu turystycznego)

“…Proces ten był sygnalizowany przez wielu autorów (Durydiwka, 2005;Groch, 1991;Jagusiewicz, 1998Jagusiewicz, , 2006Kowalczyk, 2001Kowalczyk, , 2005Krasiński, 2004;Łęcka, 2005;Madeyski, 1997;Mika, 2005;Mika, Ptaszycka-Jackowska, 2007;Mościbroda, 2005;Ptaszycka-Jackowska, 1999;Rydz, 2005Rydz, , 2012Rzeńca, 1997;Szromek, 2010Szromek, , 2012Szromek, , 2018Widawski, 2017 i in.). Przebiega on podobnie jak w wielu innych krajach (Buzsik, Jónás-Berki, Köbli, Pálfi, 2015;Joppe, 2010;Kasagranda, Gurňák, 2017;Mainil, Eijgelaar, Klijs, Nawijn, Peeters, 2017;Vystoupul, Šauer, Bobková, 2017 i in. ), jednak jest trudny do naukowej weryfikacji, która najczęściej opiera się na opisowej rekonstrukcji relacji zachodzących między funkcją kuracyjną a pozostałymi funkcjami turystycznymi wkraczającymi do uzdrowisk.…”