New Horizon of Okinawan Tourism : Approaches to Health Relaxation Tourism in Okinawa

When Okinawa tourism is in the process of quantitative and qualitative change, it is now strongly expected to utilize healthy resources of "Longevity Prefecture Okinawa" and establish unique tourism for health and recuperation. Now we are scientifically evaluating subjective and objective effects using keywords such as "natural environment of Okinawa," "Spiritual climate," "healing," "health of mind and body" and "food," and trying to contribute to development of health and recuperation tourism program and business in Okinawa. We use intellectual resources of the University of Ryukyus and develop the tourism program in collaboration with private sectors. We also conduct basic experiments on use of marine resources of Okinawa for spa. Spa and esthetic technology and branding will greatly influence the future stay-type tourism. One of our goals is to increase the level of the spa and esthetic technology and branding. We are making our efforts to achieve the goal and constantly getting results. This paper will show some of our achievements