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Challenges and Opportunities of Entrepreneurship for Developing Eco-Health Tourism Destinations

The purpose of this study is to point out the challenges and opportunities for the development of health tourism, based on the research results conducted in a certain tourist destination, in order to be more involved in the global health tourism business network. The reason for this lies in the fact that the environment of the health tourism offer is changing. The demand for health tourism services is increasing, while the support from state health insurers has stagnated and decreased. The system is becoming more complex and consumers are more and more oriented to the commercial part of the health tourism offer. Moreover, the concept and content of health tourism are not uniquely perceived ; neither in theory, nor in practice. As health tourism is a very important part of the selective tourism offer, it is necessary to assess the achieved level of health tourism development in the particular tourist destination. But even more important are the preconditions and available resources of further successful development, which should be ensured in a way that guarantees entrepreneurs will recover their invested capital. The paper seeks to capture the main elements of competitiveness of the health tourism destination business, which were highlighted in the general literature, applicable in good practice or identified in the research process.The results of this research will be used in order to find answers to the question whether management in the Kvarner tourism destination is responsible when it comes to using many available resources for shaping a competitive eco-healthy tourism product, as a part of an environmentally responsible health-tourism destination offer. For this purpose, destination management has to ensure that the development of a destination is based on the principles of environmental protection and sustainable development. The results of this research show that in the Kvarner tourist destination basic resources are available for the development of eco-health-tourism, however, these opportunities are not used enough which presents an important opportunity for entrepreneurship. The reasons for entrepreneurship in this field are based on the destinations’ tradition (Austrian Riviera in the 19th century), the availability of basic resources (research results) and on the knowledge that health tourism is one of the segments which recorded double digit growth in the structure of the selective tourism offer (trends and best practice experiences).The outcomes of this research have great implications for actual tourism development in Croatian tourist destinations, as well as their position on the world tourism market. Entrepreneurship in eco- health tourism provides a higher degree of capacity utilization in tourist destinations by extending the tourist season, and by improving the evaluation of all elements of the overall tourism destinations offer. This may have significant economic impacts on the national economy, if these principles are also upheld by other tourist destinations which have significant natural and social resources or other relevant factors important for health tourism development.

Health tourism; Eco-health tourism destination; Tourism offer; Entrepreneurship; Economic benefits

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