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Strategies for the Spa Hotel Industry: Comparisons between Italy and Australia
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Strategies for the Spa Hotel Industry: Comparisons between Italy and Australia

Timothy J Lee and Bo Ram Lim
Program and Abstrcts for the ANZALS 10th Biennial Conference, p.66
Australian and New Zealand Association of Leisure Studies (ANZALS) Biennial Conference, 10th (Dunedin, New Zealand, 06-Dec-2011–08-Dec-2011)
2011
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https://anzals.org.au/conferences/past-conferencesView
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Abstract

Tourism
Worth US$60.3 billion and forecast to continue to grow, the global spa industry ranks high in terms of wallet share for leisure activities and keeps attracting new players. The aim of this paper is to compare the spa hotel industries of two countries with different market positions: Italy, characterised by a long tradition and a well established reputation, and Australia, an emerging player. Italy has a long spa tradition linked to thermalism and still ranks high in the top spa countries. Australia is a new player and boasts figures not highly competitive yet, but with forecasts to grow. In a market whose demand is growing increasingly fast, Italy's challenge is to maintain its competitive advantages, while Australia strives to achived it. This could lead to the adoption of different strategies. This study compares the strategies of the spa hotel industry fo the two coutnreies in order to find out their differences and similarities. The findings is that Italy and Australia have analogous challenges to face and are affected by common trends; therefore, the strategies they put in place in terms of operations and marketing are very siimilar. This conclusion is supported through the analysis of the marketing strategies of one Italian and one Australian hotel, selected as demonstrating best practice. The contrbution of this study lies in the attempt to shift the discusssion from macro-region to country level, as the prevailing approach amongst scholars and practitioners is to examine the spa phenomena at the Eurapoean, or Asian-Pacific levels.

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