최근 관광 트렌드 변화에 따라 예술관광이 경쟁력 있는 콘텐츠로 주목 받고 있지만, 현재 국내 온천의 경우 차별화된 예술관광지를 찾아보기 힘들다. 이에 본 연구는 해외 사례 분석을 통해 예술관광에 의한 온천의 활로를 모색하기 위한 방안을 제시하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 예술과의 융합을 통해 고유한 관광 브랜드를 구축하고 있는 일본 도고온천, 벳푸, 독일 바덴바덴을 대상으로 집합적 사례연구를 실시하였다. 연구 결과, 세 도시 모두 공통적으로 온천과 예술을 결합한 차별화된 콘텐츠 및 다양한 체험을 제공하고 있었다. 또한 공공·민간 협업을 기반으로 정책 지원과 인프라를 확대하고, 온천자원을 활용한 지역경제 활성화와 글로벌 브랜 드 구축에 주력하고 있었다. 이와 같은 연구 결과에 따른 시사점은 다음 과 같다. 예술·문화·체험을 융합하여 새로운 관광 가치를 창출해야 하며, 정부·지자체·민간·지역사회가 협력하는 거버넌스 구축이 필수적이다. 또 한 지역 예술을 토대로 한 문화 정체성을 구축하고, 이를 바탕으로 글로 벌 마케팅을 추진해야 한다. 마지막으로 관광객의 체험 욕구를 반영한 맞춤형 온천예술관광 프로그램 개발이 필수적이다. 본 연구는 국내 온천 지역을 예술관광 거점으로 발전시키기 위한 방향성을 제시하였다는 점에 서 의의가 있다.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the image similarity and attribute recognition of the top 10 rated spa destinations (Chungnam Deoksan, Chungnam Dogo, Busan Dongrae, Daejeon Yuseong, Chungnam Asan, Gyeongbuk Bomun, Chungbuk Suanbo, Gyeongnam Jangyu, Chungnam Onyang, & Gyeongbol Bugok) in Korea based on the visits to these spa places by the customers. Research design, data, and methodology – The survey of this study was conducted on the visitors to the top 10 spa destinations in Korea from April 8 ∼ April 21, 2017, and a total of 300 questionnaires were distributed. Of them, effective questionnaires used in the final study were a total of 241. In this study, empirical analysis was made through frequency analysis, factor analysis, and multidimensional scaling ALSCAL(spinning symmetry for image similarity and rectangle for attributes recognition) by using the Statistics Package SPSS 24.0. Results – According to the analysis result of spa destination image similarity, the stress level was 0.16453 and the level of the stress was good. Moreover, the coefficient of determination (RSQ) was, which had a description of each aspect of the spa destination, 0.79908. According to the results of attribute recognition, the stress value of 0.11805 represents a degree of conformity, and the coefficient of determination(RSQ) appeared at 0.98665. Therefore, the results of this analysis are that the similarities between spa destinations and the attribute recognition of the spa destinations is a suitable model that is properly expressed in two dimensions. Conclusions – First, according to the analysis result of image similarity, Deoksan & Dogo spa revealed similar images, as well as the Dongrae and Yuseong spa, while on the contrary Asan, Bomun, Suanbo spa has different images from the rest. Second, according to the results of attribute recognition, Asan and Onyang spa has competitiveness in terms of accessibility to spa destination; Yuseong, Dongrae, Jangyu spa in terms of spa facilities, spa tourism conditions, and service & shopping conditions. while spa water quality and spa costs showed low attribute reflection for all 10 spas. Therefore, the spa visitors cannot recognize the differentiation of spa water quality and spa costs.

Hot springs development will be more activated with the five-day work week system than before. Nevertheless, investment and development achievement of hot springs has not resulted in a successful performance to foster townships, and this calls upon locals to build a guideline to develop hot springs. This study intends to analyze laws on hot springs, which influence mostly on the hot spring development, to gather up the information on the present state of the development, and to suggest considerations for further development plans. Features of the hot spring development are as follows: One is that metropolitan cities will discover hot spring resources more than small cities. Therefore the development will be twofold : one for resort tour and the other for one-day rest and recreation. In addition, Korean laws on hot springs are more site development-oriented to support tourism and recreation than to protect environment and discover unused resources. This makes hot spring development easier and efficient being supported by hot spring law, law on territory development and use, and tourism promotion law. On the other side, planned landscape trimming can be uniformized and unharmonized in terms of local identity and environment-friendliness. This is why careful considerations such as goods and bads of the local resources, local history and culture are needed in hot spring development. A long-term development project should include remodeling based on local identity and development trends. The third point indicates that Korean hot springs development has recorded relatively low performance due to difficult private capital attraction, and a high fence on land purchase and development approval. It is essential to release restrictions on the hot spring development-especially on those whose development performance has not been successful so that best practice can be supported by the government in remodeling and marketing. New plans on hot spring development should be also examined based on developer's capacity and local authorities' volition on the plan. Last point shows that most hot springs development plans have been designed only based on territory utilizing plan and facilities arrangement, not considering much on fund-raising, operational plan or feasibility analysis. Therefore the tourism promotion law should reinforce guidelines on tourist site approval system by supplementing criteria. At the same time, an education on tourism development planning is necessary to deepen developers' understanding, since most developers are experts more on city development, landscape architecture, designing, constructing and engineering than tourism development.