An in depth analysis by the Tourism Observatory for Health, Wellness and Spa (TOHWS), led by László Puczkó, uses a Destination Impact Model (D-TSA) to assess the impact of hot springs tourism on the economy of Heviz in Hungary.
Tourism is a complex social phenomenon. The tourism system – which comprises the tourists (and source regions) who represent the demand and the tourism sector (and tourism destinations) which embody the supply – is changing dynamically and as an open system, it interacts with elements of the social, cultural, political, economic, natural and technological environment.
It is essential for tourism destination management organizations (DMO’s) and for every stakeholder, to collect data and information about the role and impacts of tourism in the DMO area.
The Destination Impact Model (D-TSA) is a tool that collects information about and monitor the following factors:
- Economic role of tourism, as many areas of economy are related to tourism;
- Social role of tourism, as a significant part of the permanent population may come into a direct relationship with tourists and tourism and residents are impacted by tourism indirectly.
With this application of the Destination Impact Model (D-TSA, an application of the Tourism Satellite Account approach to a destination, or D-TSA) that was developed by the professional team of the Tourism Observatory for Health, Wellness and Spa and Xellum Ltd., we intend to present the complexity of the economic impacts of destination as a tourism system.
The D-TSA required the analysis of a large amount of local and national data, as indeed tourism is extremely complex and connected to many other industries which had to be taken into account in the modelling. Understanding this data is important because a major part of the annual funds available to the local government (Hévíz) are allocated from the central budget as a rebate of the taxes “produced” in the towns.
This means that the local tourism tax (LTT) itself shows nothing of the role and importance of tourism: we can derive significantly more information from the data which defines the extent of other related taxes (e.g. VAT, local business tax, income taxes, profit tax).
Applying the D-TSA to Hévíz as a tourist destination is unique because the major tourist products at this destination place are quite concentrated i.e. the basis for the tourism offer of Hévíz are therapeutic medical and wellness services which are based on the natural factor, ie healing hot springs. Therefore in this case, D-TSA will essentially model the impacts of health tourism based on a hot (thermal) spring.
Because of the multiplicative effects, the impacts to be accounted are multilevel in a destination as a tourism system. These impacts are quite complex and have several ways in which we can and should analyse the. The number of guest nights is the most frequently applied and referenced factor. The tax revenue levied on every guest night still can only show and illustrate a fraction of this complex system of impacts.
The impact of tourism at the destination level
Impacts can be favourable and unfavourable at the same time. Positive impacts can be considered as revenues, employment or infrastructure development. Significant negative impacts can be seen in the form of environmental harms caused by increased traffic (e.g. increased noise and air pollution, dirt, pollution of environmentally protected areas); at the same time, these impacts can be prevented through conscious visitor management tools which must be applied by the DMO organization.
In the D-TSA every type of impact generation was considered:
- Direct impacts: tourist expenditure at the tourism service providers and attraction facility operators;
- Indirect impacts: tourist expenditure at other economic organizations of the destination (e.g. clothing industry, post) and turnover of the suppliers to the destination’s tourism service providers;
- Induced impacts: every other impact coming from the multiplying impact i.e. expenditure of business partners and organizations who share the indirect impacts.
The local/destination-wise impacts of tourism can be modelled best through expenditure, because tourism cannot be interpreted without tourist expenditure (either locally or otherwise). Naturally, the more the visitors stay within the destination, the higher the extent of the impacts which appear as a result of their expenditure (further costs and income) within the catchment area. Thus, many tourism and non-tourism services, service providers and organization (can) benefit from tourist expenditure, such as:
- Accommodation service providers,
- Catering places,
- Retailers (food and gifts),
- Leisure activities,
- Transport businesses (for Hévíz, we should point out the regional airport), and operators of attraction facilities (such as bath and spa services, museums).
DMOs and local governments can obtain information about the economic impacts of tourism also through other, typically indirect (derived) information, such as:
- Local governmental tax revenues (e.g. local tourism tax and the related governmental supplement or local business tax rate),
- The number of employees employed by the related businesses, etc.
The D-TSA is capable of modelling the tourism impacts at destination level as a result of very complex and diverse statistical analyses. The modelling was conducted using the following steps:
- Selection of towns with notable tourism (in Hungary)
- Establishment of an equation and functional system (definition of various explanatory and background variables about the impacts of tourism)
- Analysis of Hévíz data based on underlying variables and explanation of the causes of differences,
- Macroeconomic modelling to assess the multiplying effects.
D-TSA tested more than 160 variables from which we selected the explanatory variables.
Treasures of Hévíz
Health tourism is the one and only industry in Hévíz. The Thermal Lake of Hévíz is the world’s largest biologically active natural thermal lake. It is located in a unique setting, a mere 6 km from the Lake Balaton, 198 km from Vienna and 193 km from Budapest. The lake’s formation goes back to ancient times. The first signs of volcanic activity were the heat sources, as was the eruption of Ancient ‘hévíz’ (i.e. ‘hot water/source’). Two systems of dikes were formed by the movement of the Earth crust in which precipitation was collected. This is how Lake Balaton was formed 22 thousand years ago, the time that marked the beginning of the Hévíz thermal lake’s history. The heat coming from the deeper layers of the Earth crust heats the waters locked inside the underground deposits, which means that the lake is also heated by geometric energies.
The 4.4 hectares water surface lake’s source rich in minerals can be found 38 m deep in the cave, where tens of thousands of years old warm and cool karst waters are mixed. Hévíz bathers have experienced that the water’s depth varies between 150 and 200 cm. You can stand up around the edges and sink thigh deep into the softened and healing turf mud. The thermal lake of Hévíz is a special formation regardless of its medicinal effects, since the majority of warm water lakes are placed in clay or cliff bottoms, and this one has a turf bottom.
The lake’s warmth and medicinal effect are protected by 33.9 acre of woods from the harms of the external environment (wind, dust and noise). The lake is covered in light steam in the winter and early spring and cool autumn mornings, the significance of which lies in preventing the water from cooling down (which is also prevented by the plants covering the surface). This enables guests to bathe even in the winter months. The lake produced 410 l/sec., which means that water is changed every three days. Its temperature does not go below 22 C and may reach 38 C in the summer. The indifferent water temperature does not exhaust the guests wishing to relax and heal, on the contrary it has a relaxing and refreshing effect. The steady and constant water flow has a beneficial effect on the body as it keeps bathers lightly massaged during the whole time they spend in the lake.
The therapeutic effect of Hévíz thermal lake enables a wide range of uses both in terms of prevention and cure. The basis of complex balneotherapy is thermal water, which is equally rich in dissolved and gas components thereby combining the favourable characters of carbonate, sulphur, calcium, magnesium, hydrogen carbonate and light radon emanation thermal water. The medicinal suggestions of the therapy covers a wide range of locomotor diseases: it has beneficial effects on rheumatic locomotor diseases, osteoporosis, degenerative spinal/joint diseases, Bechterew syndrome, inflammation diseases of the joint in their chronic phases, post treatment of injuries and locomotor operations as well as tender tissue rheum, secondary diseases of the joints, chronic, peripheral, nervous, mechanical-related complaints, pre- and post-treatment of operations on the joints and discs as well as chronic and gynaecological conditions.
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