Hürriyet ÇİMEN

Health tourism has become an important tourism kind in respect to revenue and the number of participant. It is supposed that it will go on developing increasingly within the next years. Health tourism has actualised for three different purposes. The first of them is Medical tourism, the second one is thermal spring and spa-wellness, and the third one is the tourism of elderly care and disabled care. The leading countries in health tourism are India, Singapore,Malaysia, South Africa and Turkey respectively. Turkey is on the fifth rank in World Health Tourism. More than three hundreds patience acceptance have been taken place to Turkey by year of 2013. Patiences usually from Germany, Holland, Austria, Iraq and Belgium utilize a service related to generally eye, tooth, orthopedics and plastic surgery fileds. The vital leading destinations are Antalya and Istanbul in Turkey. In Turkish world, health tourism is not suitable yet. According to the development trend of health tourism may lead to the development of Turkey in the Turkish world. Successful examples can be models in Turkey. Considering the number of potential physicians, facility capacity and geographical proximity in the Turkish world, joint projects should be developed by identifying the types of tourism to be developed. Thus, the Turkish world as well as the tourists coming from other countries will be able to create a network of roaming in itself. In this way, health tourism may have an impact on the integration of the Turkish world. The aim of this study is to increase the awareness of the perception of health tourism. Thus, it will be possible that Turkhis world having an importance role in World Tourism sector will take place in health tourism among the leading countries through the advantages of Turkey’s present background.

Keywords: Türkish world, health, tourism, health tourism, termal tourism, spawellness