Standort Tirol Special Edition Wellness

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WELLNESS Subject: [ TOURISM STUDY ]
A study of the Austrian Hotel andTourism Bank paints the following picture:
eighty-five per cent of hotels that generate more than 50,000 euro GOP (gross
operating profit) per room follow a clear philosophy (and are geared towards a
specific target group); sixty-five per cent of these focus on wellness, and ten per
cent of the latter specialize in supplemental medical programs
The wellness philosophy is bearing fruit
[ specifically SEEN ]
Pooling Core Competences
A round the world,Tyrol is
known as a tourist destination
that attracts millions of guests both
in winter and in summer. However,
Tyrol has also developed into a
business and technology location
that stands for innovation, creation
of value, and growth, as well as
health and quality of life. “Yet there
remains one question,” as Harald
Gohm, CEO of Standortagentur
Tirol, points out. “How, aside from
slogans such as ‘lovely country’,
‘highly qualified staff ’, and ‘central
location’, which also our neighboring
regions are marketing themselves
with, can we become unmistakable?”
One possible answer is: by way of
smart specialization through a pool-
ing of the Tyrolean competences in
the fields of technology, tourism and
health.
As early as the nineteen-seventies,
the recipe proved successful with
the combination of wellness and
tourism, whereTyrol has been an
international pioneer.Today, Stand­
ortagentur Tirol promotes selected
lighthouse projects, as e.g. Sinfonia, a
27-million-euro EU project that deals
with energy efficiency in urban con-
struction and living. Another subject
looked at is artificial snowmaking.
“Here we’re trying to establish a
development center for innovative
methods of producing snow for
ski slopes in which economy and
science together develop products,
services and methods with which
artificial snowmaking and slope man-
agement can be made more efficient
and the use of resources at the same
time reduced,” Gohm explains.
Also in the field of health tourism,
he says, the idea was to promote
specializations in which the whole
spectrum, from prevention via
treatment to regeneration, went
hand in hand with tourism.This is a
future market opening up for Tyrol,
Gohm is convinced. “There are also
great chances here for the wellness
sector, from construction to the
development of innovative business
models and food production, as well
as architecture and medicine.Tyrol
is literally predestined to take on a
pioneering role in these areas and
to use its competences in order to
make itself clearly stand out.”
Active Collaborations
In the Cluster Wellness Tirol more than one hundred
members work together towards innovations.
I t is a network that stretches across
the whole of Tyrol, compris-
ing 105 members who employ
around 7,300 people, and having gen-
erated a turnover of 461 million euro
in 2015 – the Cluster Wellness Tirol.
“Our clusters are networks of business-
es, research institutions, educational
establishments and special interest
groups in fields of economic and tech-
nical strength,” Harald Gohm, CEO
of Standortagentur Tirol, describes
the Alpine innovation platforms. The
members use joint synergies in order
to promote innovations, as well as spe-
cial services. “At home and abroad the
joint approach improves the visibility
of the sectors and their competences,”
says Gohm. The work of the Cluster
Wellness Tirol currently focuses on
projects in the fields of medical and
health tourism applications, alpine
health tourism, the optimization of
wellness facilities, and innovative busi-
ness models in the second health mar-
ket. What is also actively promoted,
though, is the collaboration with the
other four Standortagentur clusters
(Renewable Energies, IT, Mechatron-
ics, Life Sciences). Almost four hun-
dred members, around 50,000 jobs,
and an annual turnover of ten billion
euro make for a powerful platform
that is amply being made us of. In
2015, some 2,500 participants visited
workshops, information events, excur-
sions and conferences. “Subjects such
as e-health, telemedicine, or robotics
in medicine have to be approached by
thinking across sectors. Wellness and
health is a case in point here: it touch-
es not just on medicine, nutrition, and
psychology, but also on mobility, food
production, energy and energy effi-
ciency, etc.,” Harald Gohm points out.
Info: ]
Harald Gohm:“We are promoting
selected lighthouse projects.”
Around 2,500 participants visited the events of the five clusters in 2015.
Picture:Andreas Friedle
Picture:StandortagenturTirol
STANDORT: We have a bed to sleep
in, we have food and a shower, can
use the sauna and get a massage. Why
then do we go to a wellness hotel?
FRANZ LINSER: Because wellness
hotels are conceived as a kind of al-
ternative world, or they should be.
Back at home, books are piling up
on the bedside table, in the holidays
I want to have time to read. In my
day-to-day life I live unhealthily, in my
holidays I want to experience what is
healthy. This alternative world works
best when it encompasses the central
aspects of our life: eating, exercise,
sleep and body care – the latter not
just in the sense of cosmetics, though,
but in the sense of body care from
within.
STANDORT: In other words, a re-
turning of stressful everyday living to
a state of normality?
LINSER: Yes, that is one of the main
functions of a good wellness hotel. It
should be able to bring about well-be-
ing, for us to say to ourselves, “I feel
comfortable in my skin.” Looking
at it from this perspective, a simple
wellness area in the basement, with
a sauna hot until 10 p.m., will not be
enough. After all, wellness was devel-
oped in the United States as a philoso-
phy of life and not just as another ser-
vice offered at a hotel. Many of those
who take this view now find them-
selves in a vicious price war cycle, as
customers naturally say to themselves:
“They‘re all offering the same thing.”
STANDORT: Can this alternative
world, this return to normality, work
in a big hotel having hundreds of
beds to fill?
LINSER: Around here there was a ten-
dency for a long time to increase size.
Yet we must not forget one thing: in
Tyrol the wellness hotel industry has
managed to turn seasonal into year-
round businesses – a remarkable feat
of the mid-nineties that has never
been fully acknowledged. If you apply
the basic principle “I let rooms” to a
wellness hotel, you have to ask your-
self where the money for wellness is
coming from. Wellness around here
still comes free of charge. It began
with 150 beds and a few saunas. That
worked for years, for the guests, the
hotel owners, and the staff. In the
meantime, though, what we define as
wellness costs more than the rest of
the hotel. A new wing of hotel rooms
is cheaper than the wellness area, and
the same applies to running costs.
STANDORT: Do you see alternatives?
LINSER: I perceive two options. For
one thing, to invest in software, not in
more hardware.
STANDORT: What do you mean?
LINSER: By offering programs and
concepts in the context of existing
infrastructure, you can find your way
back to services you can charge guests
for. Asking them to pay just for the sau-
na you are going to turn them away.
The alternative is to employ a trained
professional, who knows about saunas
and is able to give advice, e.g. if such
and such a sauna is compatible with
a guest‘s blood pressure. Or you of-
fer individually adapted multiple-day
programs for losing weight, to help
with chronic insomnia, etc., which
may come at a price, which also have
to have an effect, though.
STANDORT: And the second alter-
native?
LINSER: Many middle-class hotels
take the top resorts as an example
and believe if they follow it they will
do fine themselves. Which is a mis-
take. What the others have built over
thirty years, you will not achieve over
night. However, as our society is in-
creasingly dealing with psychological
problems – for example burnout –
and the desire for peace and quiet,
for being away from it all, is getting
ever stronger, there will also be an
increasing demand for small-scale
packages. There is a potential there.
Above all, this is something that Tyrol
has always been good at, namely at be-
ing genuine, informal, personal.
STANDORT: Which direction, in
your opinion, is wellness heading in?
LINSER: Up until now, wellness has
been a product that one indulged in,
coming under the heading “I want
that.” More and more, though, it is
turning into a product categorized
under “I need that.” This is a devel-
opment that we‘re not yet able to es-
timate, and that reaches well beyond
the tourist industry. An American
physician once said: “In the future,
we have to teach people how to live.”
I‘m absolutely convinced that he was
right. Which is why wellness 2.0, or
3.0, extends into our everyday lives,
we are looking at a sort of life coach-
ing. ]
Picture:Andreas Friedle
Interview: Wellness Hotels – A Healthy Alternative World
“Wellness is turning
into a product
categorized under
‘I need that’.”
Franz Linser studied sport science
and English at the University of
Innsbruck where, after two years
in the United States, he worked as
a lecturer. From 1989 to 1992, he
coached the Austrian national ski
team. In 1993, he founded a con-
sultancy firm and since then has
been an entrepreneur in the field
of wellness and health tourism and
has been developing hotel con-
cepts in Austria and beyond. Info:
FACTS. NEWS.
[ Subject:Wellness ]
Together with eight partners from
Salzburg, South Tyrol, and the Province of
Udine, the Cluster Wellness Tirol has sub-
mitted an Interreg Project on the subject
of health tourism in winter.This project,
entitledWinHealth, aims for a sustainable
valorization of the natural and cultural
spaces of the Alps in terms of a health
tourism in winter, in order to confront the
growing pressure to adapt and diversify
that results from climate change and al-
tered guest needs.The goal is to develop,
across the borders, innovative value chains
and business models for the winter season
that are not meant to replace the snow-
based core products, but to supplement
them.
By merging the subjects of health
and tourism, the Cluster Wellness Tirol
promotes evidence-based health tourism
on the management level. In the project
“Wellness mit Wirkung” (lit.Wellness With
Effect), traditional wellness elements such
as sauna, yoga and massage are given a
foundation in scientific studies, carried
out together with medical partners, and
presented in an intelligible information
brochure to the entrepreneur.
Picture:Aqua Dome