engleski

The role of medical tourism in development of Croatian health tourism

Due to dynamic growth of medical and wellness tourism, health tourism is, within contemporary tourism development, one of its most agile type of special interest tourism. Elasticity of demand for health tourism services is traditionally less prominent, particularly visible in the period of crisis and recession than any other special interest tourism. This can be proven by analyzing trends and forecasts of medical and wellness tourism growth. Health tourism has not benefited from its development opportunities in the Republic of Croatia and therefore, it is not competitive on international tourism market, despite its natural prerequisites, long tradition and other development opportunities and evident growing trend of tourists’ interest in health-recreational, wellness, and medical programs in coastal destinations. The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of medical tourism in developing health tourism in Croatia, using the available wellness offer in hotels and the offer of medical services in polyclinics in coastal tourism destinations. Likewise, the potentials for the development of health tourism in traditional spas in the continental part of Croatia are analyzed. The main hypothesis of this paper is that medical tourism cannot fully use its development potentials due to the fact that it has not been positioned appropriately in the current plans of health tourism development in Croatia. In order to test this hypothesis, secondary data sources were used, as well as the results of the authors’ primary research that was conducted when planning investments in health-tourism centers in the period 2002 - 2011.

medical tourism; health tourism; Croatia

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