Handbook of transnational rural wellbeing tourism product development
Many of wellness and wellbeing tourists, with particular reference to those ones of the Olive Oil Route, are motivated by the same factors as wellbeing tourists: they seek relaxation, escape from busy jobs, peace and quiet, sports, and healthy gastronomy, combined with cultural experiences and visiting. Even in this case, an Olive Oil holiday as a product means peace and quiet, an easy-going and warm atmosphere, nature, scenery and activities related to nature, traditions and culture. In the organization of a holiday, the key elements are the value for money and the beauty of the place. The ability to lead a healthy lifestyle, comfort and usability of the tourist attractions of the place and eating well are the other significant elements, those ones able to influence the choice. Their motivations can be defined as psychological needs and wants, which include internal forces that trigger, direct, and integrate individuals’ behaviors and actions. Olive Oil and tourism have already been for long intensely linked sectors, as olive oil-growing regions usually are favored landscapes with rich cultural heritage and a smooth, southern climate and therefore attractive for visitors. Guests taste olive oil, visit cellars and are attracted by the olive oil growing culture, olive oil producers profit from tourism expenditure, develop special tourism offers thus diversifying their product assortment and sources of income, the tourism destination sharpening its profile and gaining more attractiveness. A trip represents the tourist and can express many aspects of his personality: his lifestyle, his values, his more stable habits. However, an important push to travel is also derived from the current needs of an individual, who at different times of his life can dream and choose very different holidays. The motivational reasons for travel of the typical traveler of this tourist product are related to several factors which emerge the improvement of their well-being through holidays to meet physiological needs (e.g. rest or care), to search for or express prestige , to evade from everyday life, their cultural enrichment and the desire for knowledge. Touristic reasons may obviously vary and include other forms such as: • Tourism as a pleasure of curiosity, which leads to the search for forms of travel connected with exploratory or cognitive activities (eg hiking or training trips); • Tourism as a dream to realize, trying to experience life contexts that are not accessible on a daily basis and are therefore considered attractive. • Each traveler builds its own tourist expectations and an "interior image of each journey" that poses among its possible choices; this involves assigning a meaning to the vacation that it drives in comparison with some internal aspects, making it more or less likely a choice. The quality of a tourist destination and the satisfaction of tourists are among the elements to take into account to improve the management and promotion of a tourist area and destination. The proposed tourist packages are built taking into account those elements and respond to the needs of the potential visitors, affecting the intention to repeat the trip, since elements like the image of a destination or satisfaction of a trip positively affect the loyalty of tourists. To summarize, Well-O-Live touristic package is able to respond and satisfy the following four customer segments: * Senior customers: offering of products and services related to personal wellness, healthy food, cultural and folkloristic attractions. * Business customers: offering of products and services related to the possibility to acquire knowledge about the process of olive oil and its peculiarities.
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