Do Size and Ownership Determine the Willingness for Sustainable Innovations in Spa and Health Tourism? A Case Study on Baile Felix Spa Resort, Romania
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
First of all, I would like to congratulate authors for the current research since there is nowadays an immense debate concerning the real impact of tourism on the environment and human communities, and specifically with respect to tourism's openness to sustainable innovation. From this, authors have defined their goal to try to assess the potential for sustainable innovation in spa and health tourism in a relevant area in Romania.
Methodologically, as stated in the “Abstract” they have used a survey-based study of both 16 entrepreneurs who own a tourist accommodation unit, as well as top and middle managers from 17 large tourism enterprises. However, in line 253 they state that from the 137 units that were contacted, they collected a total of 91 answers (of which 29 belong to top and middle managers in the hotel sector, representing 15 hotels, and the other 62 people are entrepreneurs and owners of guesthouses, villas and rooms for rent.
This is not clear, and authors should correct this apparent discrepancy.
This study has a good and interesting literature review.
Authors have balanced older references with some more actual which is not only important but also allows readers to have a better perspective about the theoretical discussion.
However, there are only a few references from 2022 and 2023. I also advise authors to find some references from these two years.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript deals with a very "hot" and exciting subject, even if the research is limited to a specific area of Romania. The manuscript has a logical structure and is written following the rules of form. The literature reviewed is strongly related to the research topic. The authors have done a thorough job and have used appropriate statistical methods to test the hypotheses, which have led to correct and practically applicable conclusions. I would like to make two comments. The hypotheses should be drawn up on the basis of the literature reviewed and derived from it. The results of the discussion should be referred back to previous research findings to make it clear whether they confirm or refute them.
Only minor revision is needed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper presents a statistical analysis and study concerning the perceptions and potential for sustainable innovation in tourism in a particular region of Rumania. The results present significant findings in different sustainable product and service issues.
There are some suggestions that authors must take into consideration to improve the quality of the paper:
- Rewrite the abstract and describe more precisely the contribution of this work, highlighting the results and the goal of the research work.
- The introduction section must be improved. It is short, and it is necessary to incorporate arguments, ideas, and the actual situation of this topic. What are the most critical challenges? The purpose is to motivate the readers to consider and read the manuscript.
- I suggest changing the title of ‘Section 2’ to Related work.
- What are the research questions that sustain the formulated hypotheses? It is necessary to define these questions before the hypotheses. What are the authors looking for with this analysis? Goals or objectives?
- A general schema or diagram that presents an overview of the proposed methodology is welcome in Section 3. It can contain the procedures, statistical tests, and methods that will be applied to the groups, identifying the inputs and possible outputs in this figure.
- Is it possible to analyze by different regions of the country (clustering analysis)? What do you think about the sample? Because it is too small to extrapolate the research analysis?
- Please explain in the discussion and results section why they did not use an ANOVA or regression analysis in their experiments, Pearson correlation, among other statistical techniques.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper aims to assess the potential for sustainable innovation in spa and health tourism in Romania through a survey-based study of both 16 entrepreneurs who own a tourist accommodation unit, as well as top and middle managers from 17 large tourism enterprises. Even though the aim is clear and the hypotheses clearly defined for analyzing the aim, this paper lacks the critical and innovative theoretical discusson and original methodology/technique for analysing the aim. Theoretical contribution to the literature should be improved and findings should be supported by field research discourses and discussions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
