Exploring Tourist Experience and Well-being in Health Tourism

[[abstract]]This research examines the impact of tourists’ experience in health tourism – including hot spring and SPA-on their sense of well-being. It also takes into consideration two segmentation factors- personality traits and health-promotion lifestyle. This research consists of two parts: the subject of part one is tourists, which includes 519 effective questionnaires; and the subject of part two is professionals, which includes 28 effective questionnaires. In the first part, two methods are employed to analyze tourists’ experiences. First, this research uses hierarchical regression to prove that personality traits and health-promotion lifestyle play moderating role in establishing the relationship between tourist experience in health tourism and their sense of well-being. It further shows that personality traits and health-promotion lifestyle have impact on tourists’ sense of well-being by the mediation of their experience in health tourism. Secondly, it applies SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) model to analyze the cause-effect relationship between above four constructs. In the second part, this research employs DEMATEL (Decision Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory) method to understand the degree of influence between these constructs, the relevance of influence between them, and their network relation map. This research concludes that tourists’ personality traits affect their health-promotion lifestyle, influence their experience in health tourism, also affects their sense of well-being after the trip. In order to enhance tourists’ sense of well-being, this research recommends that one should first understand tourists’ personality traits and health-promotion lifestyle when developing appropriate marketing strategies.