Abstract
Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Demand for Turkey's Health Tourism: A Gravity Model Approach
The purpose of this research is to explain the factors that affect tourist inflows to Turkey via the gravity model. In this study, the cross-sectional data about the tourists who benefit from health services of Turkey in 2014 and the data about the countries where tourists come from were used. According to the findings, while a gross domestic product of countries is positively correlated with health tourism potential of Turkey, gross domestic per capita and the distance between countries are negatively correlated with health tourism potential. Besides these, while being a Muslim country where tourists come from has a negatively impact on the health tourism potential of Turkey, being a European country where tourists come from and existing among the countries where Turkey doesn’t implement the visa application have a positive impact on the health tourism potential. Finally, it is of great importance to analyze and report the data about health tourism that provide a significant contribution to Turkey’s economy periodically.
Keywords
Health tourism, gravity model, cross-section analysis, ınternational trade.
