Factors affecting the choice of medical tourism destination: Spain as a host country

ABSTRACT

The objective of this research is to make an empirical analysis of the social, economic, and behavioral factors that influence the decision to travel for medical tourism reasons. A Logit model is estimated to identify significant variables using official microdata provided by the Spanish Ministry. The results describe the most likely medical tourist profile as a non-European, non-employed, non-retired person who uses the internet to plan the trip, whose destination is an accredited medical tourism center and who does not incur any extra expenses on wellness services. This research may raise the probability of attracting tourists seeking medical treatments and increase investment in this growing sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical tourism
• transnational healthcare
• logit model
• tourist profile
• Spain

Acknowledgments

The data of the survey have been obtained from the General Sub-directorate of Knowledge and Tourist Studies, attached to the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda. We are particularly grateful to the SGCET for providing the database.

Notes

1. The results obtained from surveys of different countries may vary depending on the context of the study. Depending on the data available, researchers can tackle the problem using different methodologies. Industry leaders and managers must be familiar with as many studies as possible for the decision making.

2. Motivation is understood as the internal factors or determinants that encourage to take an action, in this case, to make a trip.

3. Remember that the modal value of the significant variables is a European traveler usually going to Spain (EU = 1), with destination outside of the medical tourism center (DST = 0), travels as a couple (WOM = 1, MEN = 1), spends seven nights (FREQ = 7), is working (WORK = 1), non-retired (RTRD = 0) and uses the internet (INT = 1) to plan the trip where he/she does not buy any wellness service (WELL = 0).

Additional information

Funding

This article has been financed through project INIA RTA2017-0082-00-00 by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and by support funding given to the research group ECONATURA, Government of Aragon.