Abstract
Introduction: One of the new tourism capacities of Iran in recent years is medical tourism, which has grown significantly. Tehran is one of the most important cities in the Middle East in the field of medical tourism. This study intends to analyse medical tourism capacity development in Tehran hospitals from international tourists’ perspective to identify the most efficient factors in medical tourism capacity development in Tehran hospitals. Methods: The research type is applied and the research method is descriptive-analytical. The research sample is the international medical tourists entering five major Tehran hospitals having the International Patient Department license (IPD), in which 154 samples were selected randomly from a total sample society of 258 using Cochran formula. Results: The results show that the priority areas of medical tourism capacity development in Tehran are low medical costs, optimal quality of services, easy access to medical services and physicians’ knowledge, respectively. Conclusion: In general, regarding the studied variables, it can be concluded that there is a good opportunity for medical tourism capacity development in Tehran from the international tourists’ viewpoint.
Highlights
One of the new tourism capacities of Iran in recent years is medical tourism, which has grown significantly
Iran and in particular Tehran metropolis having diverse tourist attractions alongside high-quality hospitals can strongly compete with other medical tourism destinations in the Middle East region if its medical tourism capacity development components are known and identified well; this research aims to analyse the medical tourism capacity development elements of Tehran metropolis from international tourists’ point of view based on the Novel Conceptual Model for Capacity Development of Medical Tourism[11] to see what the major medical tourism development capacity areas are in Tehran metropolis and how these components could end in boosting medical tourism in Tehran metropolis
According to the total number of incoming international medical tourists to the five target hospitals of Tehran within the three months of spring 2018 when the number of tourists was 258 and based on Cochran’s formula at 95% significance level, 154 questionnaires were distributed among tourists in these five hospitals using a simple random sampling method
Summary
One of the new tourism capacities of Iran in recent years is medical tourism, which has grown significantly. Conclusion: In general, regarding the studied variables, it can be concluded that there is a good opportunity for medical tourism capacity development in Tehran from the international tourists’ viewpoint. Tourism is a global industry involving hundreds of millions of people in international as well as domestic travel each year.[1] One of the new tourism capacities in recent years is medical tourism which has grown significantly especially in Iran. Medical tourism is said to have grown explosively since the late 1990s with thousands of patients moving to countries such as India, Thailand, and Mexico, in search of medical care usually deemed too expensive, inadequate, or unavailable at home. With the rise of more affordable cross-border travel, rapid technological developments (encompassing both surgical techniques as well as the increased volume and access to ‘quality’ medical information on the internet), these services have been further facilitated and made available to a wider segment of the consumer market.[5]
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