Health and Travel for Consumers: A Bibliometric Analysis of 20 Years of Health Tourism

Introduction

Developments in health technologies in recent years have revealed the need and desire to access better health services and facilities (Awad et al., 2021). On the other hand, developments in transportation and communication technologies have provided great convenience to people in terms of accessing fast and accurate information both in terms of facilitating transportation and meeting this need and desire. Therefore, the development of health tourism has become inevitable (Pessot et. al., 2021). Health tourism is defined as people's experience of the touristic values of the place they go while reaching quality health services and facilities (Swarbrooke & Horner, 2007).

The developments in the field of health tourism in recent years have enabled health tourism as a sector to reach a dimension that can guide the economic and political decisions of the countries (Savaşan et al., 2018; Uçak, 2016). Developments in health tourism have provided important developments not only in economic and political terms but also in terms of knowledge on the subject. Health tourism is a sector that has become an important source of income for many countries and is becoming increasingly widespread (Hoque et al, 2020). Thanks to health tourism, people who want to receive health services can compare the doctors, treatment methods, prices or the quality of the services offered both in the country they live in and abroad and choose the most appropriate service in both aspects. In this context, health tourism is seen as an important service export in the international arena. In addition, with industry 4.0, digitalization has been experienced in the health tourism sector, as in many sectors (Dalkiran, 2022). Health tourism is seen as one of the main sectors affected by digitalization due to its nature. Using modern technologies is one of the low-cost and practical tools to build international trust in health tourism, disseminate updated information quickly and attract health tourists (Kaewkitipong et al., 2021).

In general, developments in health tourism have attracted the attention of researchers and many studies have been carried out on the subject. Such developments in science; reveal the importance of examining the scientific articles made in that field in order to understand and evaluate the relevant information, identify the trends, and reveal the progress it has made, and it has prepared the environment for the increase of the research for its examination. In this study, it is aimed to create an inclusive framework by revealing the general view of the studies in the web of science database on health tourism.