This analysis proposes a scenario-based framework to enhance eco-wellness tourism, suggesting significant improvements for policymakers and tourism planners.
Decision-making and planning in eco-wellness tourism can vary depending on time, resources, and the perspectives of stakeholders, as it is often challenging to generalize the results of decision-making models across different scenarios. Hence, the primary objective of this study was to propose a scenario-based framework for optimising eco-wellness tourism development. For this purpose, maps of 26 factors affecting the evaluation of nature-based eco-wellness tourism, including water, climatic, and kinetic therapies, were used in the Ardabil province of Iran. Weighted criteria maps are integrated into suitability maps for various wellness tourism products under different scenarios, ranging from very pessimistic to very optimistic, using the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) operator. Then, to identify areas of consensus, scenario-based maps for water, climate, and kinetic therapies are combined. In the very pessimistic (optimistic) scenario, climate-only therapy accounts for 0.91% (2.23%), water-only therapy for 1.07% (8.44%), and kinetic-only therapy for 3.5% (5.81%) of the area. The most significant expansion is observed in areas integrating all three therapies—climate, water, and kinetic—which increase from 3.23% in the very pessimistic scenario to 14.5% in the very optimistic scenario. The findings have substantial insights for policymakers, tourism planners, and investors in developing and promoting unique eco-wellness experiences that benefit tourists. The methodical approach and choice of data and parameters in the study can be inspirational and adjustable for relevant studies.
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Kazemi et al. (2025) studied this question.
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