Wellness tourism struggling in Austria

Hotel guide author believes that the days of new wellness tourism records in Austria are over as wellness hotels struggle to keep up on quality.

The days of new wellness tourism records in Austria are over. According to the publisher of independent wellness hotel guide ‘Relax Guide’, the struggling economy combined with an increased competition has led to stagnation in room prices. This can lead to sharp declines in quality so local wellness tourism suffers.

Publisher Christian Werner argues, “It is not hard to imagine how service and food quality will suffer. So most wellness hotels were not able to improve their performance in 2015 and 49 hotels received comparably worse scores than last year. Only 29 hotels were able to improve their services.”

Werner argues that this can be a self-perpetuating cycle that is hard to break out of and that investment in quality improvements is the only way to save local wellness, “Guests are aware that wellness does not come cheap. This is why they are willing to pay more for consistently high quality.”

The main point of criticism for Austrian wellness tourism remains the large discrepancy between promised quality and reality. “We had to deal with processed food, unacceptably small sauna zones, and primary roads in front of hotel entrances. Or pools which could hardly fit ornamental fishes.” said Werner.