“Infernum”: Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Health Tourism Industry – A Snapshot

Introduction

The recent pandemic is one of the significant shocks in the known history of human kind. It is expected a fall in global GDP by 4.5% due to COVID-19 in 2020 leading a monetary GDP loss of 76.69 billion USD in the best case COVID-19 scenario.¹ The humanity, of course, experienced similar pandemic in the history yet analyzing the economic impacts of the last one is much more complicated because of the complex socio-economic relations. The impacts of crisis in one industry may be felt more now than the past mainly because of the interwoven connections of the industry. Therefore, the inter-and intra-industry repercussions of the pandemic is felt like the pandemic itself although it might be at varying degrees for different industries. The impact of pandemic on tourism industry is critical for many countries including developed and developing ones yet the negative impacts is detrimental for most of the developing countries especially in those where tourism income has a large share in GDP. This study aims to outline the impact of pandemic on tourism industry in Turkey in general, and on health tourism in particular after a more than one year of the outbreak of the pandemic. The first hypothesis is to compare the loss from tourism due to COVID-19 for Turkey and France for 2020. The second hypothesis is to analyze the loss difference from tourism and health tourism income for Turkey. To test the hypothesis, time series methodology is used. The loss from tourism and health tourism is calculated by the ARIMA forecasting methodology. The tourism industry is vulnerable to shocks more than any other industry. The importance of health tourism for Turkey and for several other examples is unquestionable.²

In this chapter, primarily in the background section, literature review is summarized and the importance of health tourism for Turkey is explained. The main focus of this chapter is to test the two hypothesis. First of all, methodology is clarified and then findings are elucidated. Findings section compiled of two analysis; the comparison of tourism loss of Turkey and France, and the loss of tourism and health tourism receipts of Turkey. Finding section is followed by the conclusion part. Finally, the chapter ends with solutions and recommendations, and future research directions.