A study on the situation evaluation of medical health tourism in istanbul during the COVID-19 pandemic process

The Covid-19 virus, which emerged as respiratory tract symptoms in China's Wuhan province at the end of December 2019 and was identified on January 13, 2020, as a result of research conducted in a group of patients, was detected. This epidemic spread around the world in a short time with a very high rate of infection and countries started to apply full closure or curfews. The Covid-19 epidemic has affected the health tourism sector as well asaffecting all sectors around the world. With this research, the number of visitors coming to Turkey for medical health tourism within the scope of health tourism and the income they brought to Turkey were compared with the Covid-19 process. In this research, semi-structured interview technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used on the effects of the Covid-19 epidemic on medical health tourism, what are the developments and changes in the field of medical health tourism after the epidemic, what are the expectations, what should be done. In addition, national and international studies in the field of health tourism were used. In Istanbul, a high level of decrease has been observed in the treatments included in the scope of medical health tourism activities. While the number of tourists coming to Istanbul within the scope of health tourism was 1.017.034 people in January 2020, the Covid-19 epidemic was effective and decreased to 334,825 people with a 67% decrease in 2021. Along with the number of tourists coming to Turkey, there has been a high decrease in income. While the income from patients was $1.154.105 in 2019, it decreased to $692,463 in 2021 (Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism Strategy Development Branch, 2004-2021) In addition, in this study; In the medical health tourism sector in Turkey, determinations were made on issues such as lack of promotion, lack of personnel, lack of infrastructure and lack of technological equipment, and it was tried to contribute by producing solutions to eliminate these negativities.