Immersive Experience for Thailand Wellness Tourism

Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Tourism Management and Hospitality

Year: 2022

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.ictmh.2022.07.100

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Immersive Experience for Thailand Wellness Tourism

Natnisha Kongtaveesawas, Pattarawan Prasarnphanich Sukree Sinthupinyo3Ann Suwaree Ashton

ABSTRACT: 

Immersive tourism experience provides travelers with the unique experience of the destination and can play a significant role in encouraging actual visitation and engaging both travelers and destinations in particular travel activities. While wellness tourism has gained its popularity, thus, the previous research on a theoretically integrated immersive effect regarding experience economy’s theory in tourism literature concerning four dimensions; educational, esthetic and entertainment, and escapist specifically has not previously been conducted with respect to wellness tourism. To address this gap, this study develops and investigates a conceptually comprehensive model on the expected wellness tourism experience of travelers with the moderating role of immersion within the context of Thailand. The entire data set from 446 survey respondents was statistically tested with descriptive statistic and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). In previous tourism studies, Escapist Experience dimension has been considered as the most tourism engaging factor. Thus, the finding of this research validates that Esthetic and Entertainment Experience dimensions accounted for the most variance in context of Thailand wellness tourism with and indicator value of 0.99 respectively. Recommendations for the planning of effective immersive wellness tourism experience concerning four experience economy’ theory will be investigated in future studies.

keywords: Immersive Tourism Experience, Wellness Tourism, Experience Economy Theory, Confirmation Factor Analysis