A Scoping Review: Exploring the World of Medical and Wellness Tourism

摘要

Purpose: Medical and wellness tourism is a growing phenomenon, and tourists all over the world are traveling with the express purpose of accessing medical treatment or promoting health through physically and psychologically beneficial activities. This industry has continued to expand with the Internet's help, as customers can now make choices that are more appropriate and informed decisions. Design: This research employed mixed content analysis methods. The qualitative approach reproduced tourists' appraisals and assessed the spatial relationships between terms and concepts in medical and wellness tourism, with generalizable and reproducible results. Theoretical Contribution: This study specifically adds to the literature on post-experiences of medical and wellness tourism and the impact of Web-based information through reviewers' satisfaction and willingness to recommend facilities to others. Practical Contributions: Medical tourists' reviews indicate shared commonalities when identifying significant factors in medical services received. These individuals also focus on cost, treatment effectiveness; time spent collecting healthcare information, and recommendations they plan to offer to friends and family. Wellness tourists perceive resort facilities---including room conditions---and thalassotherapy treatments as the primary drivers of good service. Critical attributes of room condition are overall cleanliness and room comfort, especially bed, bathroom, and shower facilities. Tourists' reviews of their experiences of thermal spa facilities provide a strategic order in which to implement service attributes by degree of influence: thermal facilities and services, hotel reception and room, food quality and price, pool and bath access, location views and accessibility, and staff's professionalism and friendliness. Originality: The results add to the slowly growing body of literature on medical and wellness tourism and provide significant information to prospective medical tourists, healthcare service professionals, hoteliers, and other operators who become part of tourists' total experience. This thesis identifies new themes based on semantic analyses that explored tourists' behavior, intentions, and overall experiences shared online.