Abstract
Health and medical tourism is considered one of the fastest growing segments of the tourism industry. Recently, research on health resorts has been gaining academic attention in tandem with the positive contribution of the health and medical segments to the tourism industry. The purpose of this study is to better conceptualize how the behavioral intentions of health tourists are shaped in the emerging context of the health resort. This study illuminates the likely perceptions of prospective tourists about the attractions of health resorts, and endeavors to examine the response of health tourists using data from 359 international health tourists/travelers, comprising of Thai, Indian, and Chinese nationalities. The study also uses the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique in order to analyze the responses of international tourists gathered at two international airports in China. The present study shows that tourists’ expectations and their behavioral intentions are generally associated indicators of perceived health resort attractions. Expectations play a significant mediating role, while culture impacts the overall phenomenon of proposed associations in a moderating way. Moreover, sustainable tourism attractions also play a significant role in shaping Thai travelers’ behavioral responses, while medical facilities and risk levels are considered significant in determining Indian and Chinese travelers’ behaviors. By developing theoretical and empirical grounds, this study offers implications for further research and development in health resorts and other niches of health tourism.
Highlights
Tourism has been changing its nature rapidly in recent years due to the amalgamation of the health and medical industries in tandem with tourists’ complex quests for rest, relaxation, leisure, fun, and sustainable tourism attractions in order to find overall improvement in their quality of life [1,2]
The results further show that the mediation/indirect beta values absorbed some percentage of the direct beta value effects of the associated constructs, justifying mediation requirement as noted by Hair et al [131]
This study is triggered by the research quest that, despite the boom of health tourism, little is yet known about instrumental associations among affordability, risk-bearing level, medical facilities, and sustainable tourism attractions, as well as expectations in framing the behavioral intentions of international tourists/travelers in a health resort context
Summary
Tourism has been changing its nature rapidly in recent years due to the amalgamation of the health and medical industries in tandem with tourists’ complex quests for rest, relaxation, leisure, fun, and sustainable tourism attractions in order to find overall improvement in their quality of life [1,2]. It is noted that many individuals are moving across national borders to find their optimal health status [3,4,5] While this style of human movement is similar to tourism, it is different from conventional traveling in terms of pleasure and rest, and is commonly termed medical tourism [6,7]. Majeed et al [2] noted that there are 96 participating countries in medical tourism business, which are serving about 780 million tourists worldwide From this perspective, it is noted that many countries are emerging as medical and health tourism destinations in Asia; for example, China, South Korea, Thailand, and India; in Europe, for example, Germany, Poland, and Hungary; in Latin America, for example, Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rica; and in Africa, for example, South Africa and Cuba, etc. Since medical and health tourism are moving parallel in their core nature, that is, health and well-being, the role of participating health and medical tourism destinations is getting more important in the present context in order to globally serve the varied health care preferences of consumers
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