Adaptive Reuse Practices and Sustainable Urban Development: Perspectives of Innovation for European Historic Spa Towns

Spa towns represented, for decades, a point of reference for the European panorama of health, tourism and cultural exchange. They have been the first tourist destination in the modern sense, as well as a manifesto for a renewed demand of quality and laboratories for architectural and urban experimentations. A product of territorial relations, they have been able to aggregate ideas, capital and skills in a generative logic. However, from the second half of the 20th Century, these cities underwent a series of structural changes related to health and tourism trends that deeply affected all levels of their local systems. Today, these places are witnessing numerous episodes of degradation and abandonment of their built cultural heritage. Promoting a place-based approach, this paper argues that spa towns could be reconsidered as strategic resources in the construction of the territorial capital and that adaptive reuse practices, if integrated into strategic visions, can represent a driver for the activation of a sustainability transition based on ‘fully circular’ processes. Here, the abandoned built cultural heritage represents an opportunity space, a potential catalyst of innovative synergies, and a meeting point between local and territorial interests. While referring both to theoretical profiles and applied research experiences, the paper frames urban transformation and adaptive reuse processes as an integrated challenge within change management logics. Finally, the paper proposes a set of thematic recommendations in order to stimulate the creation of receptive environments for change and deal with the different times, scales, actors and the economic and non-economic interests involved.

Impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic on tourism facilities in the regions of Slovakia in 2020

Tourism is an inter-ministerial sector, significantly affecting the employment and development of regions. The paper aims to determine the impact of the epidemiological situation caused by the COVID-19 on the development of tourism in the regions of Slovakia based on the use of quantitative methods. Extensive travel restrictions caused a record drop in accommodation visit rate in 2020. The number of foreign visitors decreased by two-thirds year-on-year to the level of 1998. The visit rate in the Slovak Republic was mainly by domestic visitors. Despite the pandemic, in the third quarter of 2020, they exceeded last year's record numbers from the summer season. After considering the visit rate of domestic and foreign visitors, the number of visitors decreased the least year-on-year in the Žilina Region. The most significant year-on-year decrease in visitors was recorded in the Bratislava Region, where business clients were significantly absent. Gross sales decreased by almost half compared to the previous year. The highest gross sales were achieved by accommodation establishments in the Žilina Region. The number of overnight stays decreased year-on-year in all regions. However, the length of stays was significantly extended in the fourth quarter of 2020, thanks to the visit rate in spa towns.

Customer satisfaction in Slovak spas: Case studies of Rajecké Teplice, Piešťany and Brusno

This work aims to present a customer satisfaction model using selected examples from the spa industry. Specifically, it is a presentation of the satisfaction of spa customers and visitors to the Slovak spa of Rajecké Teplice, in comparison with Piešťany and Brusno. Customer satisfaction is a multiple phenomenon which is evaluated mainly by qualitative methods. Our motivation is to draw attention to the difficulty and subjectivity of qualitative research concerning such satisfaction, especially at in-service facilities in selected Slovak spas. Customers ranked them and created a ‘top 12’, according to their importance in the subjective perception of spa environments, services, health services and attractions in terms of satisfaction. In addition, the result is a comparison of the individual satisfaction of spa customers in heterogeneous spa towns. Piešťany is the most important Slovak spa center, Trenčianske Teplice is a medium-sized spa town, and Brusno a small stagnant spa.

Groundwater Mining in Contemporary Urban Development for European Spa Towns

Mining activity is usually associated with heavy industry, the degradation of space and areas with a clearly industrial character. In fact, mining can be associated with other functions, such as health resorts, recreation and leisure. In the case of spas specializing in balneotherapy, medicinal underground waters “mineral and thermal” are extracted from local deposits using mining methods, in borehole mines. Mining activity is not the main direction of development of these places, but it remains absolutely essential for maintaining the spa function and offering services in the field of recreation, rest and tourism. The article focuses on the relationship between mining activity and the basic function of spas, the spatial relations between urban development and the spa zone, the range of mineral and thermal water use (natural resources obtained from underground deposits using the borehole method), and above all-the manner of exposing mining facilities in spa space and explaining the importance of these elements. The basis for the discussion featured in the article is constituted the results of an original study carried out by the author, employing field research, in 2018 at the Institute of Cities and Regions Design, Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. Research work was performed in a dozen South-German statutory spas (Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony). Four cities representing a much wider group of spa centres were selected for detailed analysis: Bad Buchau, Bad Saulgau, Bad Aibling and Bad Schandau. It was shown that the selected cities were directly related to the mining of groundwater, but at the same time differed significantly in terms of the studied features. The study's conclusions may be useful in programming the development of spa towns operating on the basis of underground medicinal waters, as well as in the creation of concepts and projects on the urban and regional scale. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2020-01-01-01 Full Text: PDF

Protected areas in Polish Baltic seaside spa towns in 2019 and spatial order

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of protected areas in Polish seaside spa towns in order to preserve their nature value while focusing on the spatial order. Analyses were conducted considering the status of works on the Landscape Act concerning the interior of Polish spa towns and advantageous effects of that Act in the town space. This review paper presents protected areas based on the resources of the Central Register of Nature Conservation Forms (Centralny Rejestr Form Ochrony Przyrody CRFOP) available at the website of the General Directorate for Environmental Protection (Generalna Dyrekcja Ochrony Środowiska GDOŚ), which data may find multiple uses. The material for analyses is related to all the six Polish seaside spa towns (as for 01.2020). Polish seaside spa towns have many common natural characteristics. All of the six towns are located on the Baltic Sea, have sandy beaches and dunes and they are situated in the vicinity of protected areas. Frequently a green belt, typically a pine forest, separates the seaside zone from the town. Despite its very long seaside line Poland in 2019 has only six seaside spa towns (Kołobrzeg, Świnoujście, Sopot, Kamień Pomorski, Ustka, Dąbki).

Measuring seasonality at the major spa towns of Hungary

One of the leading tourism products of Hungary is health tourism, where the certain supply segments are influenced by seasonality in different scales. The primary aim of our paper is to survey the seasonality of the 9 spas with the greatest turnover in Hungary with the help of the Gini index. Our research intends to provide an actual picture about the exact measure of seasonality in the highlighted spas of Hungary, due to the overall actuality of the problem and also because no such relevant quantitative research has been dealing with this issue in Hungary yet. The objective reason why these spas were chosen and surveyed is because first of all they are mono profile health tourism centres, where tourists are visiting the settlement exclusively because of the spas, and on the other hand the visitor turnover of the mentioned settlements are significantly higher than the following Hungarian spa towns. We believe that the more we understand seasonality the more we can face with its challenges concerning tourism development. For our seasonality analysis we used the commercial accommodation statistics of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office and to estimate the Gini index we applied the monthly dataset of the guest nights.

Analysis of Bathing Habits among Spa Visitors

The valorisation of healthy lifestyle has indicated the dynamic increase of healthcare sector. The consumer behaviour has been forming deterministically in health tourism. Visitors of spa towns can select various combinations of services either to sustain their health, to rest, to relax or to recover. It has a great importance for spas offering complex health tourism services to know the demands of guests and to reach the target groups with special, personalized service packages. After considering the statistical indicators of tourists visiting the spas of Northern Great Plain Region and the competitors of a selected spa, this paper aims to investigate the coherence among bathing habits, influencing factors of service demands, age and non-motivating coherences. The survey was taken place in a selected spa in Hajdú-Bihar County in August 2018 with random sampling questionnaire involving 256 visitors. During data analysis the coherence among indicators was examined with variant analysis (Levene’s test), in case of significant result with Welch’s t-test. Variances in age groups were analysed with Tamhane’s and LSD tests (post hoc analyses). We concluded that the primary information source of spas is still the suggestion of friends, acquaintances independently of the age of the respondent. Knowing this is relevant for further marketing communication. The most important features among the respondents are the condition of the spa and cleanness which are the basics of quality services. Motivations with coherence to age are social life and gaining experience, recovery and disease prevention. Visitors have the largest interest for family and kid programs. Recognition of bathing habits helps in marketing communication, reaching target markets effectively, pricing and service developments as well. JEL Classification: Z32