Factors Affecting Health Tourism Development in Khouzestan Province in 2019

Abstract

Background: To succeed in the health tourism industry, a developing market that is able to annually generate over $60 billion in income, the factors playing an important role in this industry need to be strengthened and developed. Objectives: Thus, the present study was aimed at identifying the factors affecting health tourism development in Khouzestan Province in 2019. Methods: This was a mixed methods study conducted in 2019 in two stages. The first stage aimed to identify and categorize the factors affecting health tourism development by reviewing the articles in the health tourism field during 2000 - 2019. The second stage aimed at prioritizing the identified factors through the hierarchical analysis method. The study population included academic and executive experts in the field of health tourism in Khouzestan Province who were chosen using the purposive nonprobability sampling method. Data were analyzed using Expert Choice software and SPSS version 22. Results: The first stage led to identifying six main criteria, including socio-cultural, facilities and infrastructure, policymaking and planning, effective marketing, political-legal, and economic, and 38 sub-criteria. Prioritizing the factors in the second stage also indicated that the facility and infrastructure criterion with 0.268 and the political-legal criterion with a score of 0.07 had the highest and lowest relative importance, respectively. Also, the economic criterion with 0.231, policymaking and planning with 0.176, effective marketing with 0.144, and socio-cultural criterion with a score of 0.105 were ranked second to fifth, respectively. Conclusions: In sum, improving medical and non-medical facilities and infrastructure in Khouzestan Province is of high priority. Therefore, it is emphasized to empower medical staff along with using the capacity of start-ups related to tourism development in this province.