PLACE-BASED WELLNESS TOURISM ARCHITECTURE AT THE DEAD SEA: ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES, SPATIAL SYSTEMS, AND OPERATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

Emad Al Dein Al FAHMAWEE, Omar Jawabreh, Donia M. Bettaieb, Galymzhan Ashirbayev, Salem Mahmoud Jamil, Ines Daradkeh

GeoJournal of Tourism and Geosites, 2026

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DOI 10.30892/gtg.67363-1875
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

Wellness and health tourism has experienced significant global growth, driven by increasing demand for integrated therapeutic experiences that combine natural resources, environmental context, architecture, and interior design. The Dead Sea is one of the world’s most prominent wellness destinations due to its exceptional climatic and mineral properties. However, hotel architecture in the region often continues to follow conventional hospitality models that emphasize general leisure amenities rather than spatially integrated therapeutic systems rooted in the specificity of place. This study examines the role of architecture and interior design in supporting wellness tourism at the Dead Sea by analyzing the relationship between environmental context, natural resources, wellness-oriented spatial systems, tourist experience, and the operational sustainability of hotels. A DesignBased Mixed-Methods Approach was adopted, combining typological analysis of therapeutic spatial systems, spatial assessment of selected hotels, questionnaires distributed to guests (n = 260), and semi-structured interviews with owners and managers (n = 8), supported by descriptive data analysis. The findings reveal a clear gap between the Dead Sea’s exceptional therapeutic potential and its actual spatial translation within existing hotels. Recreational functions were found to dominate over specialized and integrated therapeutic systems, resulting in fragmented wellness experiences. The results also indicate a substantial mismatch between guests’ strong preference for integrated therapeutic components and their limited actual availability, negatively affecting satisfaction, revisit intention, and perceived hotel performance. In addition, owners and managers confirmed a direct relationship between the efficiency and integration of therapeutic spatial systems and the operational sustainability and competitiveness of hotels. The study concludes that adopting a place-based wellness-oriented hotel architecture model, in which therapeutic systems function as generators of spatial organization rather than secondary service features, represents a strategic pathway to enhance tourist experience and strengthen the operational sustainability of Dead Sea hotels.