Health tourism potential in Antalya province

Healthy living (wellness) and its awareness have become a rising trend of consumers today. Through the agency of tourism companies, the treatment program and rates to be applied are determined in the first stage for the patients who come to Turkey within one-week programs and the required health practices are performed. Then, the patients are placed in the hotels reserved for them. Various programmes in company with the guides are held in order for the patients to travel around Turkey until the treatment ends. The treatment applied to the patients is brought to an end after a certain period of time. In this way, the foreign patients are able to both travel around Turkey and complete their treatments at the highest level with the money which they will spend only on their treatments in their own countries. A tourist flow of health from the developed countries in the north to the developing ones in the south is observed. The ongoing health travels throughout history have become much more common and more global today. The development of health tourism appears more specifically in the colonies of western countries (India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand). In fact, patients have arrived in Turkey for treatment for years. However, the patients' treatments and their traffic are codified to a new system and tourism has transformed health services to an enriched product. The region of Antalya has the opportunity to use its very strong accommodation infrastructure for health services. With this study, it is aimed to determine the potential of health tourism of Antalya. For this, negotiations with the stakeholders of the sector have been performed and a summary of the negotiations performed have been presented in a model. Antalya has high potential in terms of medical tourism, advanced age, handicapped tourism and spa-wellness but low potential in terms of thermal tourism. It is a convenient place, with its accomodation infrastructure and accessibility, for those who offer health services with private and public projects and those who seek for health services.