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Health and medical tourism
Edited by C. Michael Hall
1 Introduction
Medical and health tourism have emerged as one of the fastest growing areas of academic research interest in both tourism and health studies ([2] Balaban and Marano, 2010; [16] Crooks et al. , 2010; [18] de Arellano, 2007; [23] Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), 2009; [42] Hopkins et al. , 2010; [50] Kangas, 2010; [51] Karuppan and Karuppan, 2010; [58] Leahy, 2008; [75] Morgan, 2010; [88] Reed, 2008; [109] Underwood and Makadon, 2010; [114] Whittaker, 2008). However, travel for health reasons is nothing new and has long been recorded as a driver of visitors to thermal springs and coastal locations ([3] Becheri, 1989; [9] Chambers, 1999; [33], [34] Hall, 1992, 2003; [41] Hembry, 1990; [57] Lanquar, 1989; [70] Mesplier-Pinet, 1990; [82] Niv, 1989; [104] Towner, 1996; [113] Walton, 1983). Yet there has clearly been a qualitative and quantitative change in how health and medical tourism is reported and understood. Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] details the number of articles on medical and health tourism and cognate terms recorded in the Scopus database. Even disregarding issues of definition, discussed below, it is apparent that there has been a massive shift of awareness in medical and health studies, and to a lesser extent, the tourism literature, on the significance of voluntary international mobility for health-related reasons.
This paper aims to provide an overview of the academic medical and health tourism literature and identify key themes and issues as a means of introducing this special issue of Tourism Review on health tourism. However, before examining the literature the paper will first discuss some of the issues surrounding definitions of health and medical tourism.
2 Defining health and medical tourism
Health tourism was defined by the International Union of Tourist Organizations (IUTO), the forerunner to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, as "the provision of health facilities utilizing the natural resources of the country, in particular mineral water and climate" ([47] IUTO, 1973, p. 7). [28] Goeldner (1989, p. 7) in a review of the health tourism literature, defined health tourism as "(1) staying away from home, (2) health [as the] most important motive, and (3) done in a leisure...