There has been a significant growth in health and wellness tourism, which is considered to be a new industry in the world, especially in the last couple of years. The most popular health tourism centers of the world include countries such as Turkey, Thailand, America, India, Singapore and South Korea.
There is more than one criterion to determine whether or not a country is a health tourism center. The primary criteria regarding public institutions and the private sector include innovative health investments and the power of tourism infrastructure. Other determining factors include the importance attached on international accreditation, quality policies and transparency of outputs, patient/visitor flow from different countries, the availability of educated and experienced staff, tried-and-proven applications by international standards, , advanced medical technologies and the competency of properties.
Here is health tourism in the world and our country with figures and statistical estimations.
Market size and current situation in the world
Unfortunately, it is not possible to accurately assess the global market size in health tourism with the current data. The boundaries of the concept of health tourism are not clear and country-based verifiable data is missing, which are the main reasons for the disagreements in this matter. It may be argued that there is a market with an average of 60-billion USD size in terms of “visitors that can be referred to as medical tourists visiting a country for health and wellness”. It is estimated that over 10 million medical tourists are spending 3500 to 5000 US dollars in average annually.
The health tourism market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 15-25 percent globally. For the time being, the leaders of this huge growth are Northern, South Eastern and South Asian countries, yet the situation is not so different in other countries. For instance, currently Germany has over 1000 health and beauty hotels, above 300 thermal water sources and drinking facilities operating in the health and wellness industry. Over 1 million American medical tourists are expected to visit different countries within 2014.
Turkey’s position
It is estimated that more than 500 thousand old people and patients coming from different countries visited the country in 2012 and 2013. Categorized as thermal, medical and senior tourists, a majority of these visitors apply to hospitals, while the rest prefer accommodating in properties like spa hotels and thermal resorts.
Turkey’s tourism objectives for the upcoming decade include an inflow of 2 million foreign patients and 20-billion USD foreign currency. According to the data published by the Health Tourism Association of Turkey, other objectives of our country in this field are as follows:
Thermal tourism:
100, 000 bed capacity.
Serving 1.5 million foreign tourists, 600 thousand amounting for treatment purposes.
Total revenue of 3-billion US dollars.
Medical tourism:
Being in the top 5 destinations of the world.
Total revenue of 5.6 billion US dollars.
Senior tourism:
10 thousand bed capacity.
150 thousand foreign tourists.
Total revenue of 750 billion US dollars.
The decrease in the age average of world population and insufficiency of sources in healthcare services drive people from developed countries to seek health solutions overseas. Countries which are centers of attention in this field, move towards their health tourism objectives by tapping into big investments.
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