Identifying the push and pull factors of a medical tourism destination

Abstract

Some tourists travel for medical reasons, and this is known as medical tourism. The growth of medical tourism is mainly spurred by globalisation and the availability of quality healthcare services in receiving countries. Once a medical need arises, a prospective medical tourist would usually search and gather information about prospective medical tourism destinations. Various push and pull factors would determine whether a destination will be selected by tourists to satisfy their medical needs. The aim of this study was thus to identify the push and pull factors of a medical tourism destination, and based on these, to measure South Africa’s performance as a medical tourism destination.

Making use of a qualitative research approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 medical tourism tour operators. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Some of the push factors identified were the cost and lack of treatment/medical services in medical tourists’ home countries, the availability of expertise and medical facilities at the receiving destination, and the wish to avoid long waiting lists. The quality of hospitals, cost of surgery, expertise of the physicians, as well as the accessibility of destinations were indicated as the pull factors. The findings also show that medical tourists seem to be more interested in the reputation of the healthcare providers and hospitals than in typical tourist activities in medical tourism destinations. The findings of this study highlight the fact that South Africa is not known as a medical tourism destination. Hence there is a need for South Africa to be promoted by government and other stakeholders as a credible, affordable and accessible medical tourism destination. The study contributes to the available literature on medical tourism but from the perspective of medical tourism tour operators as major stakeholders in the medical tourism industry.