International market-oriented strategies for medical tourism destinations

Abstract

Patients seeking medical care are traveling greater distances for treatment. The globalization of health care has given rise to a thriving global medical services industry. The ability to gain access to more advanced treatments and differences in cost and inflexible national health care systems encourage patients to seek treatment abroad. In the new information age, patients seek information about available treatment opportunities with less regard to national boundaries. International hospitals are seeking new marketing strategies for their services. Today, much of the marketing takes place on the Internet, which is accelerating the internationalization of the medical services industry. This article presents a comparative and interpretative study. We have interpreted the market orientation and degree of specialization of hospitals in Singapore and in Sweden, which in turn are compared to leading hospitals in the United States. In this research, we present evidence of different approaches to medical tourism based on different organizational frameworks for the marketing of medical services to international patients. The study indicates that market orientation results in greater emphasis on superior service quality of health care. This in turn leads to the delivery of improved services to patients.

China’s Health Tourism and Marketing

“…China is the biggest outbound tourism market at present and in the coming future [16]. Detailed understanding and research of this market would increase the knowledge of the hospitality industry.…”

“…Moreover, It was claimed that excellent medical facilities and qualified medical staff were key factors to attract medical tourists [15]. It was indicated that enhancing the quality of a product of health tourism would improve tourists' satisfaction [16].…”

A Look at Collaborative Service Provision: Case for Cosmetic Surgery Medical Tourism at Korea for Chinese Patients

“…The international healthcare system has recently registered an increase in the medical tourism service worldwide [ 4 , 16 ]. Related studies in this field have attempted to understand this phenomenon and investigate individuals’ motivations behind seeking such services overseas [ 4 , 17 , 18 ].…”

Elaboration of Holistic Tourist Satisfaction Index Model for Lithuania

“…summer holiday destinations, winter holiday destinations, etc.) and business tourism can be further classified based on the industry classification (e.g., medical tourism (Borg, Ljungbo, 2018); food tourism (Robinson, Getz, Dolnicar, 2018); shopping tourism (Choi, Law, Heo, 2018); etc.) ( Figure 1).…”