THE SYNTHESIS OF SPA BUSINESS STUDIES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WELLNESS TOURISM BUSINESS IN THAILAND

บทคัดย่อ

As most studies related to the spa business have been based on a single topic, their contributions may be limited only to the area/topic investigated. A study analyzing and synthesizing existing studies was more likely to yield knowledge and contributions in regard to the business sector. This study, therefore, had the following objectives: 1) to analyze past studies regarding the spa business and to classify them into appropriate topics and 2) to synthesize the related studies to obtain important knowledge for the spa business. The TCI database and Google scholar were used as main sources of information while context analysis and descriptive analysis were employed to analyze the data.

  The study revealed that there were approximately 175 studies related to the spa business. When examining spa topics, studies related to spa business topics had the highest proportion (21%), followed by marketing studies (12%) and customer behavior studies (10%). When examining the fields of study, studies pertaining to business management had the highest percentage (28%), followed by customer management (25%) and service management (16%). For research synthesis, all related studies can contribute to five important areas: 1) understanding spa customer behaviors, 2) factors in choosing spa establishments, 3) the importance of service quality, 4) the marketing of spa business, and 5) spa business management. Spa business owners/managers may apply the synthesized knowledge in order to enhance the development of wellness tourism in regard to spa services.