Search

Finally, all participants stated their intentions to revisit Iran as a medical tourism destination post COVID-19, with the vast majority keen to undergo medical tourism once the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled. While the tourism industry has faced numerous crises in the past, few studies have explored if medical tourism can be a strategy for post-crisis destination recovery. The unfolding COVID-19 crisis has severely impacted the tourism industry through a combination of business and health regulations (Ayittey et al., [2]). [Extracted from the article]

Liminal spaces of medical tourism remain under-investigated. To address this gap, liminal spaces of Azerbaijani, Armenian and Iraqi medical tourists to Tabriz, Iran are explored. Using a mixed-method approach employing direct observations, interviews and 150 questionnaires of medical tourists, data were collected and analyzed using AMOS (Analysis of a Moment Structures) software. Among the range of factors tested, appropriate infrastructure and medical tourist monitoring had the highest influence on shaping medical tourists' liminal spaces. Theoretical and managerial outcomes of this research contribute toward a nuanced understanding for destinations catering to existing and future medical tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the developments of domestic medical tourism for Australia's Sunshine Coast. Most studies have characterised medical tourism to be an outbound phenomenon, where affluent tourists select mostly developing destinations for elective surgeries due to cost, quality or faster access to treatments. However, studies concerned with domestic medical tourism remain highly implicit. Employing a case study perspective of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, this research explored the potential for domestic medical tourism to be conceived. This research found that while most stakeholders considered the region to be well-suited for medical tourism, three issues presented some barriers to its development. The three issues were residents' access to hospital facilities, lack of cooperation and hostile attitudes between practitioners. This research shows the contested battlegrounds of domestic medical tourism initiatives, and how the development of a multi-stakeholder involvement model of medical tourism can bring desired outcomes to fruition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]