engleski

Health tourism market in Poland and Croatia - financial effects and potentials

Purpose – In recent decades, health tourism has developed as a strong trend, parallel with another global megatrend - the growing popularity of health awareness. Health tourism market, in the European Union, is a new and robust niche, with an estimated 56.0 million domestic and 5.1 million international arrivals in 2014. The purpose of this paper is to describe the main characteristics and to analyse some of the challenges of developing health tourism in Poland and Croatia. Also, the financial effects of these health tourism markets are compared and evaluated. Methodology – The comparative analysis of secondary data, including the statistics of health tourism financial effects in Poland and Croatia, is done. The methodology of the paper also includes description and analysis of the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats through a SWOT analysis of Polish and Croatian health tourism. Findings – Research results show that there is reasonable ground to state that health tourism in Poland and Croatia can be a strong take-off point for their tourism in general, as well as an export product of particular significance for these countries. However, there are still many obstacles in this journey. Contribution – This paper aims to draw the attention to research gap and strengthens the call for more empirical and statistical research on the role, development as well as economic outcomes of health tourism in European Union, and especially Poland and Croatia. Keywords health tourism, development, financial effects, Poland, Croatia, SWOT analysis

health tourism ; development ; financial effects ; Poland ; Croatia ; SWOT analysis

nije evidentirano