This article is a commentary of an overview on "medical tourism" submitted by Lunt and Marrion, which describes a framework for the study of the issues related to medical tourism. The commentary attempts to differentiate between the current interest in medical tourism and the time-honored and well-established treatment abroad from countries with underdeveloped health systems. The commentary als...

This essay explores how concepts of value and cheapness circulate around the bodies of clients of the Johannesburg-based cosmetic surgery tourism company Surgeon and Safari. I show how the production of a luxurious experience and the mitigation of risk take place within a transnational network enabled by the presence of medical tourism in multiple locales. By placing Surgeon and Safari's activi...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to appraisal the prose and cone of Shiraz City in terms of its potential in the context of health tourism. METHODS The statistical sample included medical and health tourism sector in the city of Shiraz in the northwest of Fars Province, south of Iran. The efficient authorities on the topic were identified through the hospitals engaging in medical t...

Health tourism is of growing interest for tourism destinations and serves as a key theme to add value and to diff erentiate destinations’ tourism product and service bundles. In tourism research recent studies underline the importance of various forms of health tourism in the Alps. However, due to the fact that health tourism defi nitions vary greatly amongst academics one can hardly assess the...

Within the concept of cultural tourism, this article defines relatively new concepts of creative and hobby tourism, which are detected as recent niche markets. Cultural tourism is a narrow specialized market, while creative and hobby tourism relate to even more specialized segments. Even these specialized forms of tourism have their market whose growth is very probable taking into account chang...

Tourism industry has been promoted as one of the most effective development strategies in many poor areas in China. Yet, the tourism development patterns in many areas have shown unsustainable. The reason for the unsustainable is mainly due to the inability to manage the image of tourism, a public resources for all the tourism developers, in these regions. Regional tourism bureaus have not form...

The current study directly surveyed consumers on their experiences and consideration of medical tourism to test the variables thought to impact medical tourism. The sample was deployed to qSample's international traveler panel. The survey was completed by 68.5% of participants. Over a third of the respondents said they had considered medical tourism; 15% had actually traveled to another country...

Received: September 27, 2016 Revised: October 26, 2016 Accepted: October 27, 2016 Abstract: Background: More and more developing nations are promoting cross-border medical tourism as a way to enhance economic growth. Major destinations for medical tourism in South and Southeast Asia include India, Thailand, Malaysia and wealthy Singapore. Much has been written on the pros and cons of the growth...

Global disparities in medical technologies, laws, economic inequities, and social-cultural differences drive medical tourism (MT), the practice of travelling to consume healthcare that is either too delayed, unavailable, unaffordable or legally proscribed at home. Africa is simultaneously a source and destination for MT. MT however, presents a new and challenging health ethics frontier, being l...

Medical tourism is a growing phenomenon with policy implications for health systems, particularly of destination countries. Private actors and governments in Southeast Asia are promoting the medical tourist industry, but the potential impact on health systems, particularly in terms of equity in access and availability for local consumers, is unclear. This article presents a conceptual framework...