Health tourism stakeholders' attitudes, approaches and recommendations on the health tourism potential and its applications: The example of Alanya

This study, which is prepared as a master's thesis, wants to reveal the attitudes, approaches and suggestions of the managers of the institutions operating in the field of health tourism, towards the potential and practices of health tourism in the example of Alanya health institutions. With its economic and social dimensions, health tourism is a strategic sector in which Turkey and the world want to increase its share. The actual growth figures are insufficient compared to the potential. In this study, in which the qualitative research method was adopted, semi-structured interview technique was used to collect primary data. Criterion sampling technique, one of the purposeful sampling techniques, was used. All stakeholders were tried to be reached for the selection of a sample capable of representing the universe and 21 health tourism managers were included in the sample. Qualitative analysis was applied to the collected data with descriptive methods. There are many factors that will increase the health tourism potential of Alanya, such as the high number of sunny days, being a brand city in the world tourism, a large bed capacity, a large number of resident foreigners, well-trained and multilingual doctors. In addition to this, especially eliminating the deficiencies in the language of the assistant health personnel, increasing the investments in the field of health tourism, giving priority to strategic marketing management, increasing the cooperation between the public and private sectors will make Alanya one of the important health tourism destinations in the world. Keywords: Health Tourism, Stakeholder Opinions, Alanya