Abstract
Health tourism is booming all over the world, and thermal spa tourism in Spain is a type of tourism aimed at integrating with nature, achieving sustainable development. In general, its facilities are located in areas specially protected by environmental legislation. This tourism sector attracts an increasingly wide market segment that has become more demanding and better informed and that more frequently uses the Internet to gather information. Tourists’ shopping and consumption habits are increasingly influenced by new information and communication technologies (ICTs), making these a topic of interest among academics and professionals. Website development has been shown to be an area of innovation for spa facilities, but evidence has also been found that this sector has experienced difficulty in adopting ICTs. This research sought to analyse spa websites’ usability by conducting an exploratory investigation of different websites’ contents. The results reveal that the use of new web technologies by spas is underdeveloped, although these facilities have achieved good positions in Internet search engines due to the synergistic effect of the official tourism websites. That is why most of them tell their story, detail their nature and the protection of their spaces. In this way, spas turn their websites into communication channels that convey to tourists their commitment to the environment and sustainable development.
Highlights
This study focused on how spas were able to convey information to their users, through their websites, about thermal water activities and tourism, especially mineral springs, related to the therapeutic use of medicinal waters
This tourism sector is included within the broader concept of health tourism, which covers individuals who travel in search of wellbeing
In terms of the spa websites’ position in search engines, the results show that these sites are quite well placed, especially those associated with public entities’ promotion of features in surrounding areas, such as villages, places of interest, and cultural attractions
Summary
This study focused on how spas were able to convey information to their users, through their websites, about thermal water activities and tourism, especially mineral springs, related to the therapeutic use of medicinal waters. This tourism sector is included within the broader concept of health tourism, which covers individuals who travel in search of wellbeing. The common denominator of this tourism segment is water-based experiences with a healthy purpose [5,6] and tourism can contribute by giving the intangible water heritage a tangible value, that is, an economic value (in addition to the environmental one) of saving them and their connected water ecosystems and biodiversity from destruction.
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