Abstract
In medical travel, previous studies have investigated the factors that influence medical travellers to receive treatment outside the country. However, most of these studies are limited to travel motivations and perceptions of medical services at destinations. The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between medical travellers’ perceived risks, travel constraints, and destination image based on medical and non-medical attributes. This is a quantitative study whereby the data was collected from 306 sub-Saharan African medical travellers, who visited India for the treatment. The study found that physical-health risk has a significant negative influence on destination image based on medical attributes. The service quality risk has a negative effect on destination image based on both medical and non-medical attributes, and destination risk has a negative effect on destination image based on medical attributes. The study also found that travel constraints have a negative influence on both medical and non-medical destination image.
Highlights
Several countries have benefited from international medical travel in terms of increased GDP, improved healthcare infrastructure, attracting foreign currency, promoting tourism, and, more importantly, checking the brain drain of skilled medical professionals [1,2]
The medical travel destinations and the hospitals providing services to medical travellers should take initiatives to reduce the physical-health related concerns to increase the confidence of medical travellers
The study found that those medical travellers who perceived high physical-health risks possessed negative perceptions of the destination image based on medical attributes
Summary
Several countries have benefited from international medical travel in terms of increased GDP, improved healthcare infrastructure, attracting foreign currency, promoting tourism, and, more importantly, checking the brain drain of skilled medical professionals [1,2]. Many researchers disagree with using the term “medical tourism” for a journey performed solely in search of medical treatment, as the term otherwise mainly defines the phenomenon of north-to-south travel where receiving health and medical care was combined with leisurely activities. International travel for medical services in the sub-Saharan region of Africa has been growing rapidly in the last decade [5]. In the year 2010, an average of 3000 Nigerians traveled to India for medical purposes each month, spending around USD 200 million for medical care [5]. Most of the travelers visited India on social visas, India issued 18,000 medical visas to Nigerian patients alone in 2012 and received USD 260 million as revenue [8]. 100,000 East Africans travel to India annually due to high cost of treatment in their home country [9]
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