Skip to main content

Comparisons of Health Tourism Within the EU Countries

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism

Abstract

Health tourism is one of the sectors that includes two important branches, medical tourism and wellness-spa tourism and forms with the dynamism of health and tourism together. Today, the obstacles to accessing the health system, long waiting lists, the lack of diagnosis and treatment with new technology in countries of people, the desire to get quality health services at a more affordable cost, as well as vacationing or seeing different holiday destinations increase the demand for medical tourism. In this study, it is aimed to compare and evaluate the health tourism potential of the European Union, which has the third largest population in the world, in the context of medical tourism. France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Poland are economically important health tourism destinations. More than three-quarters of EU health tourism revenues are only among these five countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 299.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 379.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 379.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Connell J (2006) Medical tourism: sea, sun, sand and… surgery. Tour Manag 27:1093–1100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.11.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Cohen M (2010) Wellness and the thermodynamics of a healthy lifestyle. Asia Pac J Health Sport Phys Educ 1:5–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/18377122.2010.9730326

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Fuchs G, Reichel A (2010) Health tourists visiting a highly volatile destination. Anatolia 21:205–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2010.9687100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Carrera PM, Bridges JFP (2006) Globalization and healthcare: understanding health and medical tourism. Expert Rev Pharmacoecon Outcomes Res 6:447–454. https://doi.org/10.1586/14737167.6.4.447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Zsarnoczky M (2018) Novel concepts in the health tourism industry. Vadyba J Manag 1:67–73. ISSN 1648-7974

    Google Scholar 

  6. Martin DS, Ramamonjiarivelo Z, Martin WS (2011) MEDTOUR: a scale for measuring medical tourism intentions. Tour Rev 66:45–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/16605371111127233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. T.C. Ministry of Health (2012) Definitions and descriptions regarding health tourism. http://dosyasb.saglik.gov.tr/Eklenti/462,saglikturizmiingwebpdf.pdf

  8. Han J-S, Lee TJ, Ryu K (2018) The promotion of health tourism products for domestic tourists. Int J Tour Res 20:137–146. https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.2161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. García-Altés A (2005) The development of health tourism services. Ann Tour Res 32:262–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2004.05.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Helmy EM (2011) Benchmarking the Egyptian medical tourism sector against international best practices: an exploratory study. Int Multidiscip J Tour 6:293–311. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/77e6/c00029e73fceae075713463455ec9a07b29b.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lee J, Kim H (2015) Success factors of health tourism: cases of Asian tourism cities. Int J Tour Cities 1:216–233. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJTC-08-2014-0014

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. UNWTO (2018) Tourism highlights, 2018 edition. United Nations World Tourism Organization

    Google Scholar 

  13. Lunt N, Horsfall D, Hanefeld J (2016) Medical tourism: a snapshot of evidence on treatment abroad. Maturitas 88:37–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2016.03.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Ile FL, Tıgu G (2017) Medical tourism market trends – An exploratory research. pp 1111–1121. https://doi.org/10.1515/picbe-2017-0114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. WHO Regional Office for Europe (2012) Successful health system reforms, the case of Turkey. WHO Regional Office for Europe, Denmark

    Google Scholar 

  16. Fetscherin M, Stephano RM (2016) The medical tourism index: scale development and validation. Tour Manag 52:539–556. https://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=as_facpub1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Özsarı SH, Karatana Ö (2013) Sağlık Turizmi Açısından Türkiye’nin Durumu. J Kartal TR 24:136–144. https://doi.org/10.5505/jkartaltr.2013.69335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Global Wellness Institute (2018) Global wellness tourism economy. https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/11/GWI_GlobalWellnessTourismEconomyReport.pdf. https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/cross_border_care/docs/2017_msdata_en.pdf

  19. Mainil T, Eijgelaar E, Klijs J, Nawijn J, Peeters P (2017) Research for TRAN committee – health tourism in the EU: a general investigation, European parliament, policy department for structural and cohesion policies. European Union, Brussels

    Google Scholar 

  20. https://www.statista.com/statistics/668867/medical-treatment-abroad-in-the-eu/

  21. European Commission (2017) MEMBER STATE DATA on cross-border patient healthcare following directive 2011/24/EU

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hatice Ulusoy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Ulusoy, H., Tosun, N. (2020). Comparisons of Health Tourism Within the EU Countries. In: Kavoura, A., Kefallonitis, E., Theodoridis, P. (eds) Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36126-6_42

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics