Abstract
Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on global tourism. Vaccine tourism is a novel health tourism concept, which provides an opportunity for countries with a vaccine surplus to offer medical tourism packages to entice international tourists from countries with vaccine shortages to visit for sightseeing and receive vaccine inoculations. Understanding the factors that influence people to adopt vaccine tourism is one of the strategies that could boost a country’s tourism sector and help to revive the local economy. This study aims to examine the factors influencing the intention to adopt and recommend COVID-19 vaccine tourism among young travelers. A total of 179 questionnaire surveys were collected from traveling-related social media outlets. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed to analyze the data. The results indicate that young tourists in Thailand are inclined to promote vaccine tourism to others. Price value appears to be the most significant influencing factor on intentions to both adopt and recommend vaccine tourism. Additionally, trust in the foreign healthcare system was positively associated with young travelers’ intention to recommend vaccine tourism to others. Theoretically, this research adds to the medical tourism literature, suggesting that, while trust is an important factor influencing the medical tourism decision, it appears to be insignificant in the context of vaccine tourism.
Highlights
7.26% of respondents were very interested in vaccine tourism
While Gunawan and Sondakh [90] found that social influence has an indirect impact on word-of-mouth via performance expectancy, our study showed that social influence had a direct impact on the intention to recommend vaccine tourism packages
The young travelers surveyed in this study were interested in this research because, despite their price-consciousness, they are active participants in the travel sector
Summary
This study aims to examine the factors influencing the intention to adopt and recommend COVID-19 vaccine tourism among young travelers. Price value appears to be the most significant influencing factor on intentions to both adopt and recommend vaccine tourism. Countries around the globe have placed strict restrictions on national and international travel [2,3,4,5] These unprecedented restrictions have caused stakeholders to reduce or halt their operations within the tourism supply chain. This has resulted in significant losses for countries that rely heavily on tourism as an integral part of their economy [6,7]
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