Looking at the Future of Medical Tourism in Asia

Abstract

Despite the popularity of ‘medical tourism' (which involves travel to a foreign destination for primarily medical reasons) as a thriving global industry in recent times, a comprehensive model that emphasizes the decision-making process from the patient's perspective is lacking. In the current paper, the author develops a framework based on the protection motivation theory and designs a robust model, that focuses on how prospective Western patients intend to seek medical treatment in Asian countries. Through an extensive review of extant literature, the author presents five propositions involving key elements of the theoretical framework and makes insightful projections about the future of this flourishing industry. The author believes that this research will immensely benefit the hospitality industry and healthcare practitioners and patients.

Ethical and marketing perspectives on surrogacy tourism

“…The medical tourism market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 16% during the 2019-2025 period (Bookman & Bookman, 2007;Crooks et al, 2017). Globally, more than 21 million people travelled abroad to seek medical care of which, 1.4 million were Americans (Barat, 2021;. Thailand hosted 2.4 million medical tourists in 2016 (Medhekar et al, 2019), and experts predicted that the Indian medical tourism market would be worth US$ 8 billion by 2020 (Thornton, 2015), and expected to grow by 30 per cent annually (Naik & Lal, 2013).…”

“…Surrogacy births, as envisioned by the current author, can also be looked at from Maslow's hierarchy of needs perspective (Hooper, 2020); once a person has satisfied his/her physiological needs (food, clothes) and safety needs (medical, protection from danger), the individual typically longs for love and belonging (see Figure 1), triggering the need to become a parent in such individuals. Consequently, individuals who are unable or unwilling to give birth resort to surrogacy to address this need i.e., the need to love and 'be loved' (Bophela, 2022;Barat, 2020;Hale et al, 2019). However, surrogacy also comes with its own set of baggage, which can be discussed from three perspectives: the surrogate mother's; the surrogate child's and the social aspects.…”

“…If there is political unrest in the foreign country, then the surrogate tourist might have to be repatriated back to the home country. In such cases, the additional expenses and uncertainty involved take a toll on both the surrogate mother and the future parents (Barat, 2021).…”