Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
İGU 7th Intermational Conference On Economics and Finance, İstanbul, Türkiye, 5 - 06 Ekim 2023, cilt.1, sa.1, ss.114-116
RESEARCH PROBLEM. Health tourism, which appears as a new sector today, is actually a sector that exists but needs to be disciplined. In this sector, the human and human health factor is the focal point at the intersection of science and technology. The main basis of this study is the idea of what the health and tourism elements of the health tourism sector, which concerns human health, will contribute to the country's economy together and what kind of contribution the newly formed health tourism market will make to the country's economy. Health tourism constitutes a developing economic and non-economic sector that adds new value. RESEARCH QUESTIONS. The contribution of health tourism to the economy was investigated within the framework of the research question of the study: 'In which areas does health tourism provide economic and non-economic benefits to the country's economy?'
ORIGINALITY/VALUE. An attempt has been made to examine health tourism as a sector with its economic and non-economic benefits to the economy. The originality of this study is important in terms of examining how health tourism adds new economic and non-economic values, as it is a newly developing sector.
LITERATURE REVIEW. 'An Alternative Tourism in Turkey' published in Aydın (2012); In the article titled 'Health Tourism', what needs to be done for the development of health tourism is explained. Kördeve (2016) explained the contribution of health tourism to the economy in her article titled 'A General Overview of Health Tourism and Turkey's Place in Health Tourism'. With their article titled 'The Current Situation of Health Tourism in Turkey and Its Contributions to the Country Economy', published in 2019, Doğan and Aslan (2019) conducted a study to shed light on initiatives that will move this situation forward by examining the elements, opportunities and potential power of health tourism in Turkey. In the article titled 'A Research on Health Tourism in Iğdir Province' published in Künü and Şıktaş (2021), a field research was conducted on the benefits of health tourism to Iğdır province. Özer and Sonğur (2022) gave information about health tourism in the article titled 'Turkey's Place and Economic Dimension in World Health Tourism' published in 2022 and examined the importance of Turkey's health tourism in world health tourism.
METHODOLOGY. In this study, the inductive method was applied as a result of literature review. It was planned to evaluate the data in an objective approach with the inductive method used as the methodology of the study, with the help of the data obtained from the literature review about the sector.
FINDINGS. Health tourism has many economic and noneconomic gains for the country's economy. These achievements are as follows; Health tourism is a field of the tourism industry. Health tourism is an economic sector in which many people, institutions and even countries can work together. Provides disposable funds for health. A new health tourism market has emerged. It provides new employment areas and determines the nature of employment. It has high added value in economic terms. It has the effect of closing the current account deficit and increasing foreign purchasing power. It provides a strong country image in the international arena and provides significant prestige between countries, gives importance to technology and science, provides a consecutive work cycle and provides cooperation with other intermediary or auxiliary institutions and organizations. It is an important promotion and advertising tool for health tourism and both domestic and foreign tourism of countries, and it serves as an ambassador for the promotion of culture not only in the field of health but also as a tourist attraction. It provides intercultural sociocultural interaction. Health tourism, which is carried out in four seasons, expands the structure, size and trade volume of tourism. It adds dynamism to the country's market and markets and increases competition. It strengthens international and national cultural communication and interaction and has helped establish friendships. With health tourism, terms such as best service, best doctor, best hospital have emerged in health services. Focusing and specializing with health tourism is also an important issue. The importance given to quality in health services has increased. Health tourism is a new area for innovation and entrepreneurship. It has contributed to the development of sectors such as construction and food. It also contributed to the redesign of cities and the solution of urbanization problems. A new management strategy in the field of health tourism should be created for the country, its strengths and weaknesses should be determined, and threats and opportunities should be evaluated. Health policies have contributed to the reorganization of the country's health policies. Importance has been given to opening health tourism units in health services and there is a need for experts in this field. It is thought that health tourism will lead the way in establishing healthy cities. It is also thought that the construction of healthy areas, spaces, healthy buildings and cities should be taken into consideration over time, and will constitute the subjects of health tourism in terms of protecting natural resources such as air, water and soil.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS. Health tourism constitutes
an important economic resource for countries. In addition to the
economic contributions of health tourism to the country's
economy such as national income, foreign exchange source,
income source, investment source and development of
employment source, it has non-economic gains such as
interaction of cultures, image and quality. The health sector
should be considered as a whole, together with economic and
non-economic gains.