*4.2. The Needs and Expectations Towards Value Proposition of Spa Visitors and Potential Clients*

As mentioned before, the perspective of spa clients and potential spa clients shapes the value proposal made by an enterprise. They verify if what is presented as a value really serves this purpose, or if they discern it in some other elements of the offer. In order to properly meet the expectations and needs of spa visitors, it is needed to identify and include them into the value proposition of a model; therefore, the second part of the study was designed to reach this purpose.

In the sample of 753 subjects, 73.4% were women and 26.6% were men; this reflects the structure of patients observed in many other studies carried out in spas [53]. A similar structure is observed in individual subgroups of the examined tourists TS (77.3% women and 22.7% men) and potential tourists PT (67.5% women and 32.5% men). Among those surveyed, only 1.4% of them visited foreign spas, and at the same time, 1.6% of respondents lived outside of Poland.

People visiting the spas were mostly under the care of a spa doctor (79%). Only every fifth respondent stayed in the spa without medical care (21%); 61.2% of spa guests came there with the insurer's referral, which means that these people had no direct influence on the choice of spa in which they will take the treatment. Every third respondent had an influence on such a choice (34.8%), and 4.0% of respondents admitted that the choice was made by someone else (usually a family member).

Visitors to spas usually came from large cities with populations (33.7%) over 100,000, or medium-sized cities with 20–100 thousand residents (31.9%). Only every sixth respondent (18.9%) came from the village. The presented general structure of origin of respondents is not significantly different in groups (*p ST* vs. *PT* > 0.05). Almost the same number (2.4%) came to spas only for 1 day.

At the beginning of the research, the respondents were asked about attributes of a spa stay that make it a successful visit. Multiple options were available, as well as the possibility to add won remarks. The results are shown in Table 2.



Source: own research.

One can notice that the quality of medical care and treatment (65.5%) and the quality of accommodation (63,3) have been the most frequently selected answers, being the only ones pointed out by more than 60% of participants. The diversity in treatments offered was the third (40.8%) most popular answer, outclassing attributes such as entertainment options (2.5%) or access to cultural tourism attractions (4.4%). It is interesting in juxtaposition with answers that regarded value propositions that would enrich a spa stay. Those answers are presented in Table 3, showing overall scores, as well as percentages in groups of spa visitors (TS) and potential clients (PT).

The expectations towards value proposition vary significantly between spa patients and potential tourists in most cases. Both groups are consistent in expecting improvements of accommodation standards, making it the most frequently named improvement overall (51%). However, awaiting better quality of medical care occurs in the potential visitors group more frequently (9% difference) than in the actual patients group. Another major difference can be found in expectations towards visitor treatment. People who have not been to a spa before expect the facilities to improve in that aspect (41.9%) significantly (*p* < 0.05) more frequently than actual patients (27.8%). This might indicate that a large portion of respondents who have never been to a spa perceive those places as uncomfortable, with insufficient quality in service, not offering enough entertainment and not being addressed to younger people. Those two last observations come from relatively big differences in answers given in those two groups to the questions regarding the development of cultural activities (over 20% difference) and offering child care for the time of treatment (over 16% difference).

Quantitative research has also shown what the most important values for spa patients are. The results are shown in Table 4.



Source: Own study. Explanations: level of significance of differences \*: *p* < 0.05, \*\*: *p* < 0.01.


#### **Table 4.** The most important values for a visitor during a spa stay.

Source: own research.

It is worth noticing that the main value for health resort customers is the effects of healing and recreation treatment. Those are the values that are obtained from natural resources, available only at the sight of a spa. Moreover, those values allow to diversify the spa enterprises' product from other wellness offers. The beneficial effects of relaxation services such as stress relief, sense of beauty, beauty improvement, weight loss, fitness, and sports performance are also important, but not unique for spas. A significant value is also the tourist's integration with other tourists (co-patients) with similar health, life, and social situations, or showing similar interests and ways of spending free time. An important value is the ability to break away from the everyday life.
