Systematic Literature Review of Health Tourism Innovation

Innovation is an important issue for any business and especially vital concept for the establishment and growth of a successful health tourism businesses for gaining business improvement and differential advantage in competition. Purpose of this study is to figure out gaps in the innovation in health tourism entrepreneurship literature, show the comprehensive whole situation, areas where the related areas focused on and indicate the related promising areas for research in health tourism innovation. Thus, the significance of this study lies in 2 sub topics as; 1) providing a brief literature review on health tourism innovation 2) indicate the research gaps in health tourism innovation. Results indicate that there is a serious research gap in the innovation studies in spa and wellness tourism, since studies are concentrated on health and medical tourism. Moreover, it is understood that qualitative research is preferred by the majority of the authors followed by the mixed methods which leads to a research gap for quantitative studies in the area. Hence, most researched areas consist of determinants of innovativeness, impact on costs, innovation's relationship with sustainability, innovation drivers, collaboration, aspects of innovation on success, innovation types' effectiveness on health tourism establishments and successful innovation applications.