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Health and medical tourism
Edited by C. Michael Hall
Introduction and purpose of paper
As recent census and previous studies indicate, health travel is among the fastest growing segments, driven by:
- shifts in demographic structures as well as lifestyles and an active aging population ([19] Opaschowski, 2006; [14] Jordan and Gibson, 2005; [17] Mehmetoglu et al. , 2001);
- the need for stress reduction among the working population ([21] Tarlow and Muehsam, 1992; [6] Elliott and Johns, 1993; [9] Grell, 1994);
- a shift in the medical paradigm towards prevention and alternative practices ([18] Murray, 1995);
- increased interaction between public health and health psychology ([22] Winett et al. , 1999); and
- the shift from mass tourism towards customized forms of travel ([8] Goodrich and Goodrich, 1997).
Actually, personal health influences all patterns of consumer behavior - including travel - ([13] Hunter-Jones and Blackburn, 2007). However, and to put those claims into perspective, health travel is (still) a niche and special interest market; but it is significantly and increasingly contributing to the economy within a number of countries and is thus enjoying increasing research interest from both scholars and the tourism industry ([1] Bennett et al. , 2004). For instance, and with reference to the case of this paper, in 2004 5.8 percent of all trips of Swiss residents could be considered health oriented, up from 3.3 percent in 2001 and 1.9 percent in 1998. They mainly take place in spring and autumn ([3] Bieger and Laesser, 2005). The size of the market is still growing and is considered to be of major importance for tourism in Europe in general and Alpine tourism in Switzerland in particular ([15] Lanz Kaufmann, 2009; [20] Rulle, 2004).
Scholars view health travel as comprising three elements:
staying away from home;
health as the primary motive or characteristic of trip; and
occurring in a leisure setting ([10] Hall, 1992; [1] Bennett et al. , 2004).
Although the delimitation of health travel appears to be demand driven, there is little empirical knowledge neither on the travel motivation of the health traveler nor on their activities profile. A recent exception can be found from a study by [11] Hallab (2006) which identified five factors of motivations for health travel,...