THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH TOURISM IN NATIONAL ECONOMIES AND MARKETING STRATEGIES APPLIED IN THE GLOBAL COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT (A Case from Turkey)

10th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference - SGEM2010, www.sgem.org, SGEM2010 Conference Proceedings/ ISBN 10: 954-91818-1-2, June 20-26, 2010, Vol. 2, 1025-1032 pp

ABSTRACT

In today’s world, tourism issue has been dealt with in another way, totally different
from classic tourism. The countries which are able to constitude variour types of
alternative tourism, pioneer the others and multiplying their profit share, they have
considerable advantages in payment balances.

One of the tourism types thought under the range of variation in tourism is health
tourism. In order to have tourism in every season throughout the year.

When said health tourism, the first thing to remember is thermal sources. In addition to
this, some well-developed and well-equipped hospitals have been making big
organizations to get patients to treat and earning dollar based Money in medical
tourism.

In both activities related to health tourism means have been used. Moreover, after their
treatments, their some motives like shopping, entertaining, sightseeing, come out and
this creates a large amount of increase in tourism income because of their stay for
longer periods

Under these circumtances, it is essential to think these two topics together and to
evaluate the existing possibilities in terms of quality and quantity and it is also a must to
renovate environment and organization.

This study aimed to diagnose the problems of related medical sector and in order to give
advices to them to solve their problems.

Keywords: Health tourism, Thermal tourism, Medical tourism, Marketing strategies