Challenges for the European SPA Management. Results of the ILIS Project

Introduction. The spa industry has been rapidly growing throughout Europe in recent years, which has led to an associated increase in educational demand in spa management. The aim of the study was to identify the most important needs for training and the most significant skills among the spa managers and their personnel throughout Europe. Moreover, it was to research the background of spas were the study had taken place. Material and methods. 30 managers took part in semi structured interviews that used a pre-prepared questionnaire. The answers were analysed with Wilcoxon signed rank test and also the mean values were compared. Results. The needs for training and importance of skills vary from country to country but common areas of interest are: sales, marketing, quality and innovation management, legal regulations, operational and social skills. The complex character of answers to questionnaire was a result of different spa business models and differing domestic spa markets as well as variety of legal environments. Conclusions. Spa tourism creates a significant income among the other tourism disciplines since that further research is needed. Demands for the spa education differed accordingly to a stage of each country spa business development. Spa managers tend to express higher training needs for their employees than for themselves.