Alpine Wellness: A Resource-based View

Today, it is essential for destinations to support their unique positioning by offering specialized, differentiated products within the global wellness market. Here, ‘Alpine Wellness’ is presented as a concept, bundling the wellness offers with special Alpine character, developed by hotels and wellness providers of four countries of the European Alps to strengthen their common positioning in the global market. The participating countries were challenged to define their unique profile and to develop a wellness-specific core competence in order to develop competitive products for ‘Alpine Wellness’ based on the roots of their own region that are not easy to imitate. Therefore, the following questions have to be answered: What are the resources and competences of the region to develop competitive products that are highly valued by guests? Who possesses these competences that could be drawn into a network in order to develop core competence? In 2003, the authors conducted a study in the Italian Alpine region of South Tyrol with the aim of identifying the outstanding competences and resources of the region, and to further develop a core competence, ‘Alpine Wellness’ in South Tyrol as the base for the development of marketable differentiated products and services. Based on the results, implications for practitioners in tourism and tourism politics were formulated. The presented approach allows destinations across the European Alpine Area to investigate and develop the regional potential for a competitive positioning in the global market and the development of differentiated products.