ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on people and the workplace as part of the management of wellness tourism businesses and destinations. As such, this is an agenda-setting chapter because this is a neglected area for research. The chapter aims to identify key themes and issues in the area of people management in wellness tourism and propose these as a focus for future research and reflection. Wellness tourism, in common with other sectors of the industry, depends heavily on human intervention and mediation in the delivery of its services. The people who work in wellness tourism are, arguably, every bit (and a bit more) as vital to the success of the industry as their counterparts within the wider sector. Yet, their role is largely unsung and, certainly, under-researched in terms of theoretical analysis and practical management application. The purpose of this chapter is, first, to conceptualise the people who work in wellness, recognising the location of such work in relation to other related areas of professional, vocational and allied tourism activity across a number of service areas and, second, to identify themes and issues that merit both conceptual and empirical analysis and thereby to set a research agenda which will prepare the ground for serious academic and practitioner consideration of this area.
