Problems of Spa Tourism in Russia
Despite the growing demand for wellness services, stable dynamics of economic growth in the segment have not yet been achieved.
The following factors negatively influence the price/quality ratio and clients satisfaction towards domestic sanatoriums:
- high cost of travel
- unsatisfactory accommodation, state of equipment and qualification of the staff unsatisfactory level of services
- lack of state control over curative resources
- lack of effective advertising (especially through the Internet)
- lack of detailed information of sanatorium services included in tour packages
- treating wellness tourists as patients and lack of customer service
- increased competition with foreign wellness resorts
One of the main problems is the lack of an effective system for selling wellness tours. Unfortunately, we lost the tradition which existed in the Soviet years of medical doctors recommending appropriate resorts to patients in accordance to their health condition. Currently, the seller of curative and wellness tours is a tourist agency where the staff has little knowledge about either diseases and diagnosis or about the treatments and curative factors which exist in the resorts. However, this information is essential for making the right choice
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in the destination. Often tourists rely of mouth, choosing the resort or get information from the
As the result, the number of premature departures (due to a mismatch between the sanatorium profile and the health condition of the client frequent hospitalization (after treatment in sanatoriums) and even cases of fatality are growing.
Solve a Problem of Spa Tourism in Russia
The average age of sap customers in 30- 50 years. About 40% of guests are regular clients. The most popular seasons are spring (When chronic health problems are acute) and summer (period of holidays and traditionally preferable season for travel in Russia). Spas offer tremendous discounts in winter, but because of low occupancy many summer conveniences do not pay back, and hence are not available. As Russian spas now have to face competition in the national market with outbound trips, standards of comfort will have to be urgently introduced at spas – to improve design and to upgrade services. This idea of introducing quality standards and quality marks was discussed within the Ministry of Health from March 1999, along with the idea of introducing new educational standards and new spa professions. Congress Tourism is being considered as a reason-able product of spas (at the moment about 80% of all major events in Russia are brought to Moscow, while resorts will tailor more reasonable prices and environment for the meetings).
From the middle of the 1990s, there were four objectives on the Agenda of resort and spa associations and regions:
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Resorts and spas are to energetically take individual and corporate initiative to define ways of commercializing their business, making it profitable, as there is no return to the old command system of planning management, and distribution
Resorts and spas are to vary their products, including the products of adventure tourism, eco-tourism, congress tourism, as seasonality, low incomes and limited leisure time resources result in inadequate occupancy rates
Associations of resorts and spas are to create reservation procedures and marketing based on Information Technologies, those are to be of two types: providing for information and data bases and providing for trade
Associations of resorts and spas, together with research centres and education bodies are to create a bank of medical and spa treatment methods, which are most popular, so that this bank could be the foundation of the core product development.