Essential customer service factors and the segmentation of older visitors within wellness tourism based on hot springs hotels

Tourism-related industries have emphasized the wellness tourism market when numerous countries now face an aging population. Many studies have indicated that strong customer service increases competitive advantage. However, customer service-related research from the perspectives of customers and operators is rare. This study adopted a two-phase approach to incorporate the perspectives of older adults and operators in wellness tourism into the service factors. We extracted service factors from face-to-face interviews with senior managers and experienced consultants of the hot springs hotel industry conducted in Phase 1. During Phase 2, we interviewed older adults at hot springs, and performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the reliability and validity of customer service factors. The results highlighted the following seven customer service factors: “health promotion treatments,” “mental learning,” “experience of unique tourism resources,” “complementary therapies,” “relaxation,” “healthy diet,” and “social activities.” According to these service factors, the older adults interviewed were divided into a holistic group, physiocare group, and leisure and recreation group using cluster analysis. Finally, we propose socio-demographic variables for describing the specific characteristics of the three clusters identified.