Contemporary medical tourism: Conceptualisation, culture and commodification
TL;DR: An overview is given of the short history and rapid rise of medical tourism, its documentation, and current knowledge and analysis of the industry.
About: This article is published in Tourism Management.The article was published on 2013-02-01. It has received 465 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Tourism geography & Tourism.
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TL;DR: In this paper, a review of consumer behaviour in tourism is presented, focusing on the key concepts, external influences and opportune research contexts in contemporary tourism consumer behaviour research, including decision making, values, motivations, self-concept and personality, expectations, attitudes, perceptions satisfaction, trust and loyalty.
Abstract: Although consumer behaviour is one of the most researched areas in the field of tourism, few extensive reviews of the body of knowledge in this area exist. This review article examines what we argue are the key concepts, external influences and opportune research contexts in contemporary tourism consumer behaviour research. Using a narrative review, we examine the consumer behaviour literature published in three major tourism journals from 2000 to 2012. Of 519 articles identified and reviewed, 191 are included in this article. We examine the development of and scope for future research on nine key concepts, including decision making, values, motivations, self-concept and personality, expectations, attitudes, perceptions satisfaction, trust and loyalty. We then examine three important external influences on tourism behaviour, technology, Generation Y and the rise in concern over ethical consumption. Lastly, we identify and discuss five research contexts that represent major areas for future scholarship: group and joint decision making, under-researched segments, cross-cultural issues in emerging markets, emotions and consumer misbehaviour. Our examination of key research gaps is concluded by arguing that the hedonic and affective aspects of consumer behaviour research in tourism must be brought to bear on the wider consumer behaviour and marketing literature.
499 citations
Cites background from "Contemporary medical tourism: Conce..."
...Connell (2013) accordingly notes that a large portion of international medical travel is by diasporic populations....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a model explaining international medical travelers' intention formation by considering the impact of quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness on their intention to visit medical clinics.
433 citations
Cites background from "Contemporary medical tourism: Conce..."
...The market is rapidly expanding (Connell, 2013; Snyder, Crooks, Adams, Kingsbury, & Johnston, 2011), and competition in the international medical tourism...
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01 Apr 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the first narrative analysis of the areas of research that have developed within the destination marketing field since its commencement in 1973 and address a number of themes including nomenclature and the Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO), the evolution of destination marketing literature, competitiveness as the DMO reason d'etre, and DMO effectiveness.
Abstract: This article presents the first narrative analysis of the areas of research that have developed within the destination marketing field since its commencement in 1973. Given the broad extent of the field, and the absence of any previous reviews in four decades, a key challenge is in providing a focus for such a disparate body of knowledge. The review is structured around one principal question: ‘To what extent is the Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) responsible for the competitiveness of the destination’? In pursuit of this underlying question, we address a number of themes including nomenclature and the DMO, the evolution of the destination marketing literature, competitiveness as the DMO reason d’etre, and DMO effectiveness including issues of branding and positioning, and future research themes in the field.
432 citations
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TL;DR: The Accepted Manuscript version of the following article is available online via DOI: https://doi.tourman.2013.09.009 as mentioned in this paper, and the final, definitive version of Record is available on the Web site.
430 citations
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TL;DR: The results show the MTI allows to measure meaningful differences between countries, not only on an aggregated level but also on each sub-indexes, and provides a useful tool for the various stakeholders to measure and manage their medical tourism destination brand.
183 citations
Cites background from "Contemporary medical tourism: Conce..."
...…exists from 52 health (or wellness) tourism involving relaxation exercise and massage, to cosmetic surgery 53 (ranging from dentistry to substantial interventions), operations (such as hip replacements and 54 transplants), to reproductive procedures and even ‘death tourism” (Connell, 2013, p. 2)....
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References
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TL;DR: The rise of medical tourism emphasises the privatisation of health care, the growing dependence on technology, uneven access to health resources and the accelerated globalisation of both health care and tourism.
892 citations
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07 Nov 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, Petroune et al. present the future of health and wellness tourism in terms of management and management issues in health and well-being tourism, as well as a review of the current state of the art.
Abstract: Part One: History, Definitions and Scope Chapter One: Introduction Chapter Two: Historical Overview Chapter Three: Contemporary Definitions Chapter Four: Leisure, Lifestyle and Tourism Chapter Five: Typologies of Health and Wellness Tourism Chapter Six: An International and Regional Analysis Part Two: Managing and Marketing Health and Wellness Tourism Chapter Seven: Demand, Motivations and Profiles Chapter Eight: Planning and Development Chapter Nine: Managing Destinations and Sites Chapter Ten: Reaching Customers Chapter Eleven: Product Development Chapter Twelve: Conclusions: The Future of Health and Wellness Tourism Part Three: Operational and Management Issues in Health and Wellness Tourism Introduction Case One: Heritage of Spa and Health Tourism in Russia(Petroune, I. & Yachina, E.) Case Two: The Health Spa Resort Rogaska Slatine Returned to its Past Glory (Lebe, S.) Case Three: Regeneration of an Historic Spa Town: A Case Study of Spa in Belgium (Smith, M) Case Four: Vidago and Pedras Salgadas Spas: the Revival of a Tourism Attraction or a Marketing Technique for Beverages? (Joukes, V.) Case Five: The Luigiane Thermal Baths: a Tool for Deseasonalization of Tourist Demand in Calabria, Italy (Ferrari, S.) Case Six: Spa and Rehabilitation Centre in Eastern Finland(Tuohino, A. & Kangas, H.) Case Seven: Sao Pedro do Sul Thermal Centre: between Health and Wellness(Gustavo N.) Case Eight: Healing Hills and Wellness in Luxury (Netherlands) (Castermans-Godfried, I.) Case Nine: Using Wellness Elements for Branding an Exclusive Image of Tourism Sites in the North of Israel (Gelbman, A.) Case Ten: Peninsula Hot Springs - a New Spa Tourism Experience `Down Under' ( Laing, J.) Case Eleven: Ayurvedic Health Tourism in Kerala, India (Hannam, K.) Case Twelve: Hot Springs in Japanese Domestic and International Tourism (Ratz, T.) Case Thirteen: CHI spa at the Shangri-la, Sabah, Malaysia: its Philosophical and Management Concept and a Journey of Experiences(Chan, J.) Case Fourteen: The Big Chill Festival, England, UK (Laws, C.) Case Fifteen: The Growing Yoga Community in the Netherlands(Gerritsma, R.) Case Sixteen: Medical Tourism in India: A Case Study of Apollo Hospitals(George, B.) Case Seventeen: Business Tourism(Davidson, R.)
445 citations
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14 Jul 2007
TL;DR: This paper presents a meta-analysis of the literature on medical tourism and its applications in the oil and gas industry and investigates the demand for offshore doctors and the supply of medical tourism.
Abstract: Acknowledgments An Introduction to Medical Tourism Plastic Surgery is Not Peanuts: Economic Growth and Dependency Offshore Doctors: The Demand for Medical Tourism Would You Like a Safari With Your Lasik Surgery? The Supply of Medical Tourism Promoting Medical Tourism: The Advantages Promoting Medical Tourism: The Obstacles Inequalities in Healthcare and the Role of Macroeconomic Policy References
416 citations
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TL;DR: The review sought to identify the medical tourist literature for out-of-pocket payments, focusing wherever possible on evidence and experience pertaining to patients in mid-life and beyond, and drew attention to gaps in research evidence.
332 citations
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TL;DR: This paper underscored the issue of a severely limited formal literature that is compounded by conceptual ambiguity facing health and medical tourism scholarship, and provided evidence with regard to the scale of trade in healthcare.
Abstract: Faced with long waiting lists, the high cost of elective treatment and fewer barriers to travel, the idea of availing healthcare in another country is gaining greater appeal to many. The objective of this review is to perform a literature review of health and medical tourism, to define health and medical tourism based on the medical literature and to estimate the size of trade in healthcare. The Medline database was used for our literature review. In our initial search for 'health tourism' and 'medical tourism' we found a paucity of formal literature as well as conceptual ambiguity in the literature. Subsequently, we reviewed the literature on 'tourism' in general and in the context of healthcare. On the basis of 149 papers, we then sought to conceptualize health tourism and medical tourism. Based on our definitions, we likewise sought to estimate market capacity internationally. We defined health tourism as "the organized travel outside one's local environment for the maintenance, enhancement or restoration of an individual's wellbeing in mind and body". A subset of this is medical tourism, which is "the organized travel outside one's natural healthcare jurisdiction for the enhancement or restoration of the individual's health through medical intervention". At the international level, health tourism is an industry sustained by 617 million individuals with an annual growth of 3.9% annually and worth US$513 billion. In conclusion, this paper underscored the issue of a severely limited formal literature that is compounded by conceptual ambiguity facing health and medical tourism scholarship. In clarifying the concepts and standardizing definitions, and providing evidence with regard to the scale of trade in healthcare, we hope to assist in furthering fundamental research tasks, including the further development of reliable and comparable data, the push and pull factors for engaging in health and medical tourism, and the impact of health tourism but, more so, medical tourism on local healthcare systems.
325 citations