THE IMPACT OF HOTEL SERVICES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL TOURISM: A FIELD STUDY ON A SAMPLE OF HOSPITALS IN KARBALA

Abstract

This study aims to determine the impact of hotel services in the hospitals of the holy city of Karbala in the development of medical tourism. The current study relies on the descriptive analytical approach in order to achieve the goal of the study, a number of 400 survey forms were distributed to a random sample of patients in Karbala hospitals, of which only 382 were valid for analysis, at a rate of 95.5%. The data received was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 26, to arrive at the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive statistically significant effect between the quality of hotel services in Karbala city hospitals and the development of medical tourism in Karbala, and the quality of hotel services in hospitals contributes to increasing the number of arrivals to Karbala city. Based on the extracted results, a set of recommendations were developed, most notably, building an information base on Arab patients in particular who were previously dealt with to communicate with them and introduce them to the new services in Iraqi hospitals