AN ANALYSIS OF THE SERVICE PROFILES OF FOUR-STAR WELLNESS HOTELS IN HUNGARY

The health tourism market has been growing steadily, driven by increasing global awareness of health and well-being. To meet the diverse and ever-changing market demand, health tourism businesses strive to differentiate their products. In Hungary, hotels offering wellness services typically position themselves as either “wellness” or “medical” hotels and communicate their profiles through various marketing tools. The present research, focusing on four-star hotels in Hungary, aims to explore their positioning, identify wellness sub-profiles based on specific services, and develop a classification system for wellness hotels. By analysing the services provided by 238 four-star hotels in Hungary, it was found that 91 hotels primarily target wellness guests. Descriptive statistical methods were employed to assess the wellness services and categorise the selected hotels based on deviations from the mean, standard deviations, and concentration measures. Following the analysis of the wellness offerings, two major service groups were identified: the “wellness service group”, which primarily requires substantial infrastructure, and the “selfness service group”, which is more reliant on human resources. The wellness and selfness potential of a hotel, derived from the evaluation of its services, also serves as an indicator of market impact. Based on the characteristics of the services, the hotels were classified as relaxing wellness, health-conscious wellness, holistic wellness, medical wellness, and hotels with no distinctive profile. The proposed categorisation has practical implications for both hotel and destination management, as resource optimisation and economic efficiency require clearly defined hotel profiles. The inclusion of certain services in a hotel’s offering is a strategic decision with direct implications for the allocation of material and human resources. At the same time, at the macroeconomic level, it would also be important for national tourism management to reintroduce the recently abolished regulation prescribing services related to the terms "wellness" and "medicinal". This would allow for a uniform interpretation from both the service provider and the consumer side, which would also entail profile cleaning. It would also facilitate national economic summarization and the measurement of profile performance in the future. The increasing importance of clinical medical tourism in Hungary could be clearly distinguished.