Prosjektkatalog

Wellness tourism is one of fastest growing sectors in Scandinavia and Baltics and second among revenue growth leaders among ten global wellness markets (6,5% from 2015-2017). Wellness tourism consists of medical services (health care, rehabilitation services) and wellness (SPA services, beauty procedures). Because of this broad composition, it is very important to educate flexible and open minded wellness tourism specialist. The comparison of related study programmes revealed that important competencies are missing. Health areas students get almost no knowledge about business, tourism programmes usually have no courses about treatments. “Welltour" network was created for promotion and development of wellness tourism as well as development of study subjects related to the field.Network covers these fields: wellness tourism, physiotherapy, beauty care, oral health. It unites four HEIs: Kauno Kolegija UAS (Lithuania), Tartu Health Care College (Estonia), Savonia UAS (Finland) and P. Stradins Medical College of the University of Latvia (Latvia). Cooperation of the network inspired and supported the development of full degree study programme Wellness and SPA management at KK.
Project is planned for 3 years and this is second year application. Topics for second year were planned in advance however year 2020 and covid-19 pandemics affected wellness tourism sector in really severe way and network feels that these issues should be addressed by making changes in plans. Second year we will organize intensive course “Challenges of pandemics - changes in services, clients behaviour and business model" with the aim to explore sector adoptability and new possibilities as well as keeping focus on importance to enhance interdisciplinary approach and international cooperation, to develop creative thinking and entrepreneurial competences. We plan to have mobility activity as well - mobility within network is seen as a means to assure internationalization of institutions and to widen the competence of participants.

Project have several main outcomes planned - learning materials and students projects - case studies - on promotion of wellness tourism. Materials were prepared and presented to the students during the course and good practice cases were analyzed during the Intensive course. This autumn it was decided not to develop any online environment for materials and all communication was by emails. It is the second Intensive course of the Welltour project (IC of Project 2020 was organized in Spring) so time for preparation was very limited.
Main result, however, is networking between the students from different countries and different study fields and ideas for future cooperation. There are topics for a joint final thesis by tourism and rehabilitation students from Lithuania and Estonia discussed and approved and some applied research ideas discussed.