African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Sep 2019)
Integration of strategic wellness and sustainable marketing to achieve competitive advantage in the Tourism Industry: An empirical study in a sample of Iraqi tourism agencies.
Abstract
This paper sought to investigate the association between Iraqi tourism clients ' strategic well-being and sustainable marketing in Iraqi tourism organizations, and how clients ' strategic well-being can enhance the tourism agencies ' sustainable marketing policy. This assessment revolved around the relationship between sustainable marketing and the six wellness components; social wellness (SOC), intellectual wellness (INT), physical wellness (PHY), emotional wellness (EMO), spiritual wellness (SPR), and professional wellness (OCP). The research embraced the model of multiple regression and introduced a semi-structured survey as an instrument for the main data collection. Ultimately, the data which was gathered from 655 tourism customer respondents was considered. The findings suggest a positive association between sustainable marketing and Iraqi tourism customers' strategic wellness and the components of client wellness influencing tourism business marketing policy. The findings also showed that the companies' strategic wellness dimensions play a significant part in enhancing the sustainable marketing in tourism businesses, thus affecting their competitive advantage and the quantity of foreign investment in Iraq's tourism sector. The findings offer management a good of the attitudes and perceptions of clients in different regions, wellness and different situations of the financial market. The findings for the tourism sector as a whole can enhance marketing efforts. Considering the limited literature about this topic, this research contributes to the literature and serves as a guide for hospitality business professionals. Moreover, the research adopted an attitude to guide clients by investigating the wellness of the customer rather than the wellness of the service which has been considered in most past studies.
