The Urban Blue Space as a Wellness Tourism Destination

Abstract

The term blue space encompasses all accessible surface water as a parallel concept to green space, not as a sub-division of it, it is defined as open-air natural or manmade environments that features water, reachable by individuals either adjacently (being in, on, or near water) or virtually (to have the vision, hearing, or sensing water); blue space has a lot of health-related qualities, these qualities are well studied in previous literature, but there is a gap in connecting it with the wellness tourism destination. The research aims to investigate the fitness of blue urban space as a wellness tourism destination. From reviewing the literature, research had extracted the main concept of blue space factors on the one hand and the components of wellness tourism on the other hand. The research supposes there is fitness between them, which was applied as a conceptual framework. The methodology of the research had used an analytical, conceptual framework to assess the availability of success factors in urban blue space Zawraa Park et al. in Baghdad, Iraq, and check for its fitness to make the park a wellness tourism destination. The research concluded that the blue space enhances the park's wellness and fits it to be a wellness tourism destination according to its place making spatial attributes social interaction services provision and physical well-being.