Resumen

BONFADA, Patricia Lopes Branco; BONFADA, Marcel Rodrigo Henn; GONZALEZ, Maria Elisa Alén  y  GANDARA, José Manoel Gonçalves. The Health Tourism and the Therapeutic Use of the Water. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2011, vol.20, n.2, pp.462-477. ISSN 1851-1732.

For a long time water has been used as raw material for the evils cure and diseases and the water was one of the first tourist motivations. At the moment the health tourism arises like an alternative to the conventional tourism, in a period of changes of values of the society, that understand health like a concept ampler than the absence of disease, and to the health like synonymous of quality of life. To analise the forms of therapeutic use of the water like touristic motivation, besides an exploratory investigation, bibliographical and documentary, were done a theoretical-descriptive comparative analysis with the population of 33 bath establishments and centers of talasotherapy of in  Galicia (Spain) and Santa Catarina (Brazil). The main results were that the centers of Galicia are much more oriented to the therapeutic use of waters, offering technical specific (old and modern) for concrete diseases in agreement with the therapeutic indications of their waters. Already the catarinenses centers, have a less therapeutic and more playful use of their waters, in a context where the leisure, beauty and the relax are the new and essential elements of health tourism, but do not use all the potential of the resource, the water.

Palabras clave : Health tourism; Spas; Centers of talsotherapy; Mineromedicinal water.

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