Medical Tourism: An Emerging Terrain

Medical Tourism within the United States has become a growing industry, generally associated with people from second and third world areas coming to the United States for medical treatments. However, this trend is reversing, and there currently is a growing trend for North Americans to travel to areas associated with the developing world (Thailand, India, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey) for medical treatments, and couple this with a restful scenario for family or loved ones to offer social support to the one convalescing. This paper presentation will address the upcoming trend toward medical tourism as a captive market for the tourism/hospitality industry. It will describe some approaches within the background, to help ascertain what medical tourism is and what it entails. It will also address what some of the myths and challenges are through reporting student perceptions on the topic and lastly provide some specific strategies for workforce development and curriculum design. This emerging trend will be of interest to faculty, instructors and practitioners working within the Hospitality and Tourism fields. It will offer a cutting edge view of an emerging trend within the industry and recommend strategies for workforce preparation toward what is to evolve within the field