Service Quality Gaps in Wellness Tourism: An IPA-Based Study of Long-Stay and Short-Stay Guests in Guangxi, China

The global wellness tourism industry is undergoing a structural shift from short-term, sightseeing-oriented consumption to long-stay, residential-based lifestyles. However, resource-based wellness destinations often face a “resource trap,” where superior natural endowments mask severe mismatches in residential service infrastructure. Grounded in place attachment theory and the service quality gap model, this study applies the importance–performance Analysis (IPA) framework to investigate the importance–performance gaps in wellness service quality among long-stay tourists. Using six representative wellness bases in Guangxi, China—a canonical resource-rich destination—as empirical sites, we collected 478 valid questionnaires from wellness tourists in Guangxi, including 342 long-stay respondents (≥28 days) and 136 short-stay respondents (<28 days). The primary IPA is based on the full sample, while the short-stay group is also analyzed separately for comparison. The results reveal a significant overall importance–performance gap (mean difference = −0.53), with professional wellness services (gap = −1.11) and basic medical accessibility (gap = −1.47) identified as the most critical bottlenecks. While the natural ecological environment remains a competitive strength, core residential demands—including age-friendly accommodation, dietary customization, and daily living convenience—are severely underserved. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis indicates that demand priorities shift dynamically along the tourist-resident continuum: medical security becomes the top priority for the “oldest-old” cohort (80+), while the “pre-elderly” (45–59) emphasize active wellness programs; tourists staying over three months prioritize daily living convenience over surrounding tourist resources. These findings provide suggestive evidence against the prevailing resource-determinist paradigm in wellness destination management, extend the analytical scope of IPA to long-stay hospitality contexts, and resonate with recent evidence that healthcare accessibility is the foremost attribute for senior-friendly destinations. The study provides a transferable roadmap for resource-based destinations worldwide to reallocate resources from low-priority experiential attributes to high-priority residential infrastructure, thereby facilitating the transition from “selling environment” to “selling lifestyle”.