The challenge of digital marketing in health tourism: the case of Spanish health resorts

Abstract

Internet presence is essential for tourism companies. Health resorts are a tourism resource of prime importance for the image of a wellness tourism destination. This paper analyses the content of the official websites of Spanish spas, as well as their level of maturity in the development of e-commerce. For this purpose, a model for the analysis of websites based on the content analysis technique is proposed, as well as on the extended model of internet commerce adoption (eMICA) methodology. The model was applied to 106 spas with online presence. The results indicate that although spas seem to be prepared to carry out online transactions, a significant share have basic Internet presence, with a mainly informative function.

Hospital Brand Image and Determinants in Medical Tourism: The Case of Samsun

“…The intensive use of information technologies in the healthcare sector weakens the traditional boundaries of marketing in this field, which accelerates the digitalization process. Healthcare organizations use digital tools such as websites, mobile applications and social media to reach consumers (Armutcu et al, 2023;Cristobal-Fransi et al, 2023).…”