Health tourism focuses on the organizational and operational aspects of commercial trips for the treatment of individuals. In line with the economic growth, the industry has evolved significantly in ...the last few decades. Istanbul, Turkey is considered as one of the most viable markets in the region due to its thermal resources, mild climate, geographical accessibility, and natural resources. This study aims to present the SWOT analysis of Istanbul's health tourism with integrated hesitant fuzzy linguistic (HFL) AHP-HFL MABAC methodology to select the best strategy for its effective implementation. The proposed methodology initially determines SWOT factors required for the analysis. These factors are then weighted with HFL AHP. The results are then utilized to select the best health tourism strategy using HFL MABAC. The applicability of this approach is presented through a case study. This is the first study to propose an analytic based SWOT analysis with integrated HFL methods for the selection of most appealing health tourism strategy.
•SWOT analysis of health tourism is proposed with an integrated HFL MCDM methods.•HFL AHP is used to determine the evaluation of SWOT factors' weights.•HFL MABAC is used to evaluate the health tourism strategy alternatives.•The MCDM based on HFLTS is presented to give a more realistic result.•A case study is provided to validate the proposed approach.
This study aims to determine the attitudes of the shareholders in the health tourism sector in Northern Cyprus towards Education on Health Tourism and to constitute a basis for an educational model ...to be developed for health tourism. Qualitative (analytic) and descriptive, documentary source analysis, sampling and statistical methods, face-to-face interviews data collection technique were used in this study. The study population consists of the managers working in education, tourism and health sectors in Northern Cyprus. Using the simple random sampling, 310 people were selected and interviewed. A questionnaire with two sections was used to collect data. The first section included questions about participants’ introductory characteristics, and the second section was the Attitude towards Education on Health Tourism Scale. This scale was prepared in accordance with a literature review related to education on health tourism and to interviews performed with the experts from the education, tourism and health fields. The Scale was passed validity and reliability tests and was used in this study. The statements the participants agreed with most were: “Intermediate staff working in health, accommodation, transportation and other relevant sectors should be provided in-service training on health tourism” in the education subdimension.
Aim and Introduction: Rapid developments in organizational technologies and processes, advancement of knowledge and development of management science in the field of health services on the one hand ...and increasing the costs of providing and providing care on the other hand have caused strategists and policy makers in the sector. To make the planning, presentation and evaluation processes of health services more effective and efficient by using the various capabilities of e-commerce and information technology. In this regard, the present study has researched health tourism and trade of this type of services in Muslim member countries of the Islamic Conference.Methodology: This article is based on the comparative advantage of 50 Muslim countries in the period 1990 to 2017 using the panel data method, and using the dependent variable of health tourism and independent variables including economic size, population size, distance of countries, exchange rate, tax rate, Common language, regional arrangements, the Organization for Economic Co-operation, eight developing Islamic countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Western Maghreb have been examined.Findings: According to the acceptable value of F-Limer statistic and significant value that is less than 0.05 and the results of Haussmann test, the model will fit the panel data using the fixed effects method. The results of the present study indicate that by increasing the effective economic size by one percent, the improvement of health tourism will increase by about 0.1 percent. The obtained negative coefficient of the border distance variable shows the effect of 17% of this variable on the improvement of health tourism.
Previous studies on health tourism were limited to a small range of topics related to medical tourism. At present, the concept of health tourism has become profound because medical care has been ...altered from “disease-centered” to “health-centered”. The main purpose of this study is to identify the key factors influencing the development of health tourism in China. To this end, in the first stage, an intra-industry trade theory was introduced and quantitative methods were applied to discover the important factors. In the second stage, multiple sources, including empirical studies, official data, research reports, and notably field investigations and case studies were incorporated to take in-depth discussions. The results indicated the foremost factors affecting the health tourism trade were total health expenditure per capita and the number of domestic health consumers. Notably, health tourism was substantially determined by the “willingness to spend on health” of domestic health consumers. In addition, Chinese health tourists were more likely to positively accept health tourism services in China. An important conclusion is that China should diversify health tourism offerings for different consumer groups. Once diversified products for health tourism are provided, the number of health tourism consumers will soar accordingly, which thus contributes to forming economies of scale, lowering the average costs of health treatment, increasing health tourism profit, and stimulating economic development.
•The concept of heath tourism has been profoundly broadened.•An intra-industry trade theory is used to analyze health tourism development.•Total health expenditure and domestic health consumers affect health tourism.•Diversified health tourism offerings for different consumer groups are needed.
The importance of maintaining and restoring health has always made human beings seek health care. Lack of proper access to health care, price and quality differences, as well as other factors among ...different countries have led to the formation of a long-standing industry called health tourism. Outbreak of coronavirus throughout the world has shocked and affected most countries. In this regard, the health tourism market of Islamic Republic of Iran was no an exception and was affected by this crisis. To meet this challenge, stakeholders of the health tourism market should determine their recession during this period, strengthen their weaknesses, and use the available opportunities. In this study, we intended to investigate effect of the coronavirus prevalence on the health tourism market of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Introduction: Health tourism is a new form of tourism industry that aims to maintain recovery and regain physical and mental health and has grown in recent years. Therefore, the present study was ...conducted to investigate the factors affecting the marketing of health tourism in hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences. Methods: The present study is descriptive-analytical and was conducted on 270 individuals at some point in 2021. The study population consisted of all heads, managers, matrons, quality managers and heads of international patients of public and private hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using SPSS software version 23. Results: The results of study showed a significant difference between the components of price, place, promotion and people in the two types of hospitals (P-value <0.05). While no significant difference was observed between other components (product, physical evidence and process) (P-value <0.05). Conclusion: Providing the needs of medical tourists will increase their satisfaction. Therefore, paying attention to the effective factors in marketing and trying to solve the shortcomings of this field can be very effective in attracting health tourists and turning Iran into a medical tourist destination.
Tourism is considered as a powerful life force for economic and social development. The tourism sector stimulates economic growth both nationally and internationally, increasing employment and ...investment, with the export of services developing in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Tourism contributes to the preservation of cultural and natural heritage, it guarantees income which could be used to finance cultural heritage objects and infrastructures, promoting the overall perception of European identity and citizenship based on diversity and exceptionality (European Tourism Manifesto, 2022). In 2021, Lithuania Travel, a public enterprise, carried out research on the development of the tourism sector with the analysis of research findings provided by the expert group of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) and the European Travel Commission (ETC). According to the research, the period of crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the severe restrictions applied to the tourism sector in all countries, which not only had short-term negative effects, but also changed travel traditions and habits (increased demand for nature and domestic tourism, health, hygienic conditions and safety considered as the most important criterion when choosing a travel destination), is also relevant as Lithuania needs to maximise its potential by creating an image of a safe country with high standards of hygiene. According to the above-mentioned research, the integration of innovations and technological novelties in the tourism sector was also emphasised. In the course of the development of the tourism industry, of which the segment of health tourism is a part, with the ambition not only to reach the quantitative rates of 2019, but even to exceed them, it is reasonable to assess the socio-economic impact. The aim of this article is – to present aspects of socio-economic impact of health tourism on sending and receiving countries. During the systematic review of the research literature, the search for research articles was carried out in the following databases: Cambridge Journals Online; EBSCO; Emerald Publishing; SAGE Journals Online; Science direct; Tylor&Francis etc. The research articles included in the systemic research review cover the period from 1999 to 2023. The methods of comparative analysis, synthesis, graphical presentation and generalisation were used to present the research results. The study assessed the socio-economic impact of health tourism in two areas: positive and negative impact on the countries that send and receive tourists. The analysis of the research literature carried out has shown that if the appropriate regulatory mechanism of health services is not ensured, as well as the appropriate and fair distribution of income from health tourism activities, it may be difficult for low-income social groups to receive timely health services. Therefore, during the development of the health tourism industry, special attention should be paid to ensuring equal access to health services for all social groups, as well as to the training of competent professionals working in health tourism organisations.
•Medical tourism adoption is investigated.•The technological, human, environmental and technological factors are considered.•A survey method was employed to collect the data from the hotels ...managers.•DEMATEL and Fuzzy TOPSIS methods are used for data analysis.•Human and technological factors were the most important factors for medical tourism adoption in Malaysia.
Tourism is one of the biggest competitive industries in the world. Nowadays, medical tourism is quickly developing as a part of tourism for health and wellness care. There are many factors influencing the development of medical tourism in developing countries. This research aims to identify those factors for medical tourism development in Malaysia. We investigate the factors from the literature to develop a new decision-making model. We use two multi-criteria decision making techniques, Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Fuzzy Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Fuzzy TOPSIS), to reveal the interrelationships among the factors and to find the relative importance of these factors in the decision making model. The results showed that human and technological factors are the most important factors for medical tourism adoption in Malaysia. The results of this study will enable key players in the medical tourism industry to potentially assign investments for medical tourism in the developing countries.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of medical tourism (MT) research from a longitudinal perspective (period 1931–2016). A co-word analysis was applied to themes found in published ...research listed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus database services.
The results reveal six clusters of themes: a) issues regarding ethical implications, trust and accreditation; b) health, wellness, spa tourism and service quality; c) health-related issues, medical treatments and tourism; d) “sensitive” practices in MT; e) medical tourism destinations and marketing; and f) globalization, policies and the effect on international patients. This study is one of the first attempts to use a bibliometric approach and co-word analysis so as to offer powerful insight into the conceptual structure of MT research from academic literature and to visualize all the underlying and interconnected subfields. It also provides a guide to researchers by improving the understanding of the current state of the art and predicting the direction of future research.
•A co-word analysis was applied to elucidate the thematic evolution of medical tourism (MT) research from 1931 to 2016.•Research on medical tourism has broadened its focus since 1987.•Topics such as assisted reproduction and fertility tourism will be of interest for MT research in a near future.
