More than a special interest: defining and determining the demand for health tourism

This paper focuses on health tourism and some of its sub-sectors, including wellness and spa tourism. The paper first provides an analysis of existing definitions with some proposals for refinement. The second part of the paper addresses the lacunae in data about health tourists. Although several isolated studies have been undertaken which have resulted in data about profiles and motivations of specific segments, there have been few studies that have provided an extensive overview of demand. One of the reasons for this gap is the difficulty inherent in procuring data from tourists themselves because of confidentiality and access issues. In order to overcome this challenge, the primary data collection was based on an online survey distributed to 420 health tourism suppliers in 50 countries who were asked about their local customers, as well as domestic and international tourists. Questions were posed about the main markets for health tourism, the most popular health tourism facilities, products and services, and the most common activities with which health tourism activities are packaged. The findings show that approximately 43% of all customers in health, wellness and spa facilities are tourists and that a surprising number of health tourists can be described as 'core consumers'.