Search results

Wellness tourism is growing in importance as increasing numbers of travelers place a priority on their health and well-being by traveling. This study examined the relationships between wellness tourism destination attributes, perceived quality, perceived mental health, eudaimonic well-being, overall satisfaction and behavioral loyalty to corroborate a model explaining wellness tourism destination loyalty in Thailand.

The conceptual model of this study was examined using a survey research design. The survey questionnaire was distributed to Chinese tourists who had previously traveled to Thailand and engaged in wellness tourism activities during their trip.

The findings revealed that healthful food choices, core facilities and staff service significantly influenced perceived quality. This perceived quality was a crucial factor in determining perceived mental health, which in turn impacted eudaimonic well-being. Overall satisfaction was directly influenced by perceived quality, perceived mental health and eudaimonic well-being. Additionally, perceived quality had a direct effect on behavioral loyalty.

With the growing global interest in wellness and travel, this study offers valuable insights for tourism marketers in Thailand to enhance their wellness tourism strategies. Tourism organizations should emphasize the quality of food, facilities and staff service to attract wellness-oriented travelers.

This study highlights the interconnectedness of perceived quality, good mental health and eudaimonic well-being. High-quality experiences contribute to improved mental health and in turn enhance eudaimonic well-being.

This study protocol provides an overview of research aimed to evidence social work contributions to general practitioner (GP) clinics and evaluating the value of social workers and students in such settings. The research will facilitate and evaluate 12 months service delivery by social workers and students who will be employed in North Queensland GP clinics.

The study will be conducted in three phases. The first phase will involve developing partnerships and contractual arrangements to co-fund social workers to be employed in GP clinics. In the second phase, social workers and social work students will be practicing in GP settings and systematically recording basic demographics about their patients, areas of health and interventions. This data will be collated and correlated. Patient feedback surveys and a pre- and post-well-being scale will be applied to evaluate the outcomes of interventions. In the final phase, feedback about the value and contribution of social work in a GP setting will be sought from key GP practice stakeholders via an online survey tool to evaluate the research.

Further data is needed to evidence the contribution and outcomes of social work practice in Australia and elsewhere. It is important that social work and GPs work together to evidence and evaluate the outcomes and contribution of social work to develop sustainable funding pathways for embedding social work in GP clinics.

This is an innovative study design that will use various data sources to identify, quantify and evaluate the contribution of social work in general practice. It allows for stakeholders feedback that can contribute to policy review and the development of funding pathways to advance the inclusion of social work in integrated team care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the local residents’ perception of the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage assets in Saadani village.

This study applied an exploratory research approach to assess the local residents’ perception over the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage in Saadani village in Pwani region. The study used semi-structured interviews, observations and archaeological surveys to collect data from 134 respondents at the village.

The findings from the study revealed that the residents are aware of the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage assets in the village. Further, the respondents are also aware of the different strategies that can be used to improve the management and conservation of the cultural heritage assets in the area.

The research revealed that the residents have sufficient knowledge regarding importance and means to conserve culture heritage. Such information may be used to improve the overall process of designing and implementing cultural heritage management (CHM) initiatives.

No similar studies on this subject matter have been conducted in Saadani village. The information generated by this study will be essential for officials, policymakers, developers and local authorities on the importance of involving local community members in designing and implementing CHM and conservation projects.

As detailed criteria for evaluation of modern architecture do not yet exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), the aim of this paper is to assist in their development by providing an analysis of the scope of those criteria in the related international documents. The research objective is to identify what values of modern architecture were historically and are currently considered significant to merit its preservation.

The research methods include a review of relevant literature, collecting data from the B&H and international organisations criteria for evaluation of architectural heritage; a comparative analysis of the collected data to propose criteria for evaluation of modern architecture in B&H that are aligned with the evaluation criteria of UNESCO’s World Heritage List and with Docomomo’s criteria.

The above comparative analysis showed that such criteria could be developed by selecting relevant criteria from a long list of criteria for evaluation of built heritage in B&H, which currently do not consider architecture built after 1960.

The proposed evaluation criteria will be tested on different typologies of modern architecture in B&H to enable wider discussion of stakeholders and relevant agencies on their applicability.

The proposed evaluation criteria will contribute to the promotion of architectural heritage of the 20th century in B&H.

There has been no previous research on how to develop criteria for evaluation of architectural heritage of the 20th century in B&H.

The main purpose of this paper is to outline the antecedents of patient satisfaction in the field of medical tourism (MT) applying extant literature and to develop a conceptual model based on the review.

This paper presents a thorough review of prior studies related to the antecedents of patient satisfaction in the MT sector. Moreover, it provides the theoretical base that helped the researcher to identify significant relationship between the patient satisfaction and its antecedents.

The researchers identified the prominent antecedents of patient satisfaction and present the potential interrelationships between different antecedents of patient satisfaction such as treatment quality, cost attractiveness, destination image and service quality with patient satisfaction based on the review.

The results have momentous practical implications as they will help researchers to better understand the antecedents of patient satisfaction and their potential inter linkages with patient satisfaction in MT sector. The conceptual model derived from the review may guide the actions of researchers as well as practitioners in the MT industry as a whole. The present study provides insights for further research in the MT sector and thereby helps to further enrich the existing theoretical base of the MT.

The study brings together the scattered knowledge from the broad and extensive range of medical or health tourism and cognate literature which indicate ideological differences among various aspects of MT as well as potential factors determining patient satisfaction in MT sector (antecedents of satisfaction). The newly developed model incorporates a new construct called “treatment quality” as different from “service quality,” which is a widely used construct to explain customer satisfaction. The antecedents of patient satisfaction and their inter-linkages with patient satisfaction provide a sound theoretical foundation for the future studies.

This paper critically evaluates potential barriers to employment opportunities for ethnic minority (EM) individuals in Scottish Local Authorities – both in terms of access to job and development opportunities. It provides a fundamental discussion of concepts around race and ethnicity, and the levels of social injustice, with an explicit focus on institutional racialisation, discrimination and segregation. The paper explores organisational approaches towards recruitment, including positive action and workforce development.

This paper adopts a subjectivist (ontology) and interpretivist (epistemology) stance, based on a small-scale, in-depth investigation. The data have been gathered through semi-structured interviews with equality diversity and inclusion (EDI) officers in four Scottish Local Authorities, utilising thematic analysis.

The finding suggests that participating local authorities have a long way to go to ensure the elimination of barriers to employment for EM people. This is largely based on concerns around limitations in the application of positive action and elimination of disadvantages in recruitment and access to career and development opportunities?

The paper aims to contribute by exploring the availability of employment opportunities for EMs through the eyes of EDI Officers in four local authorities. Their thorough understanding, over- and insight into potential equality issues from an employment perspective are invaluable, focussing on more tangible organisational issues and approaches.

Governments frequently utilise tourism as a means of enhancing the economic participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia. Yet, the ‘systemic wickedness’ (Carson & Koster, 2012) of problems, purportedly addressed by government policies for Indigenous Australians more broadly, can arguably be seen as inhibiting the creation of a thriving and sustainable Indigenous tourism sector. For too long, authors have questioned the appropriateness and effectiveness of tourism policy developed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Hudson, 2016; Whitford & Ruhanen, 2010), and importantly, over and above governments’ apparent poor understanding of what ‘works’ and under what conditions, is the absence of First Nations peoples voices in driving the development of the First Nations sector. Utilising a wicked policy lens, this chapter explores Indigenous tourism policy in Australia and discusses the extent to which one particular initiative, the inaugural Queensland First Nations Tourism Plan (QFNTP) 2020–2025 addresses a range of complex and wicked policy challenges.

Based on classroom learnings from a course lesson on de/coloniality of African and Black diasporas in higher education at a small private historically, predominantly white university in the rural United States, this chapter is an invitation to critically and meaningfully engage with our own higher education institutions (HEIs) as ideal laboratories for individual, community, and institutional transformation. Engaging in a university scavenger hunt, co-designed by faculty and students, various meanings, and implications of ‘decoloniality’ and ‘decolonisation’ within contexts of higher education are interrogated and reimagined through individual and collective counternarratives in the shape of a Black feminist decolonial ‘archive’. This archive challenges and reimagines narratives in/visibilised in the university’s current archival records, which are characterised by anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, colonial innocence, and white supremacy. This chapter focuses on un/learning varying (de)colonial and decolonising worldviews of HEIs and academia through participatory narrative and archival reproduction.

The study’s purpose is to investigate the constraints and facilitators influencing skiing participation in Beijing. This research includes three segments based on the frequency of skiing participation (i.e. non-, low-frequency-, and high-frequency skiers). By doing so, the study offers an enhanced understanding of the Chinese skiing market and unveils insights assisting industry professionals to effectively address their customers' diverse needs and expectations.

An online survey was developed based on prior research and consisted of four sections: (1) skiing participation; (2) constraints; (3) facilitators; (4) demographics. Items in the constraint and facilitator scale were measured using a 7-point Likert scale. A total of 409 participants completed the survey. The participants included 137 non-skiers, 134 low-frequency skiers, and 138 high-frequency skiers.

Through an exploratory factor analysis, three constructs emerged: general constraints, facilitators and learning constraints. As expected, facilitators were a positive predictor of skiing participation. Importantly, the emergent construct of learning constraints was a negative predictor of skiing and yet, the construct of general constraints was insignificant. Furthermore, the three segments differ significantly in household status, income, and education level.

These results support previous research noting the relevance in skiing participation of the dimensions: facilitators and learning constraints. The findings point to the need for ski resorts in Beijing to offer instructional sessions for beginners so they may become familiar with skiing fundamentals and enhance their confidence, particularly among nonskiers and low-frequency skiers.