Health tourism in a developed country with a dominant tourism market: the case of the United States’ travellers to Canada

ABSTRACT

Health tourism is a booming billion-dollar business, which has attracted the attention of academia and industry. Most of the research conducted on health tourism has been conceptual or has mainly focused on health tourism activities from developed to developing countries. This study investigates the impact of tourism demand on health-related tourism spending in a developed country (Canada) with a dominant tourism market (United States (U.S.)). The study considers both volume and price effects of health tourism during the period of 1986–2016, by applying time-series analysis, including unit root and cointegration testing and application of autoregressive distribution lag modelling. The results show a positive long-term effect of U.S. tourism demand on overall health-related tourism spending in Canada, but varying results when considering the volume and price dimensions. The findings provide further insights for managing the niche business of health tourism in Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Health tourism
• tourism demand
• developed countries
• United States
• Canada
• price and volume effects

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.