Abstract:

People seem to be more interested in medical treatment and thermal sources, thus are travelling across to benefit from the rehabilitation services country’s health tourism’s are providing and therefore health tourism has started to become a growing industry. It is seen those who are concerned and are curious to discover for more are aware of being able to get a much better service quality with a much affordable price by the hospital accreditation the countries health services have to offer. The increase in the number of people who have travelled and become a part of this tourism sector have increased the revenues of medical tourism and health tourism along with the health tourism sector’s importance. This study has examined the health tourism income in Turkey to determine whether the impact of health tourism has triggered economic growth. This study also aims to assist the resolution process of tourism sector with the studies results. In order to investigate the relationship between health tourism and economic growth in Turkey both Granger causality and Cointegration analysis were conducted with a quarterly data between 2003Q1-2015Q3 period. The results indicating causal relationship between health tourism and economic growth while previous studies of the grown literature claim the opposite have resulted this paper as a contribution to the existing literature.

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