Medical Tourism and Egypt's Strategic Vision 2030: Pull Motivations That Trigger the International Patients' Intention to Visit Egypt as a Medical Tourism Hub

Abstract

This research examines the effect of international patient motivators to travel (pu ll factors) on international patients' intention to visit Egypt as medical tourism destination. It proposes a model which examines the relationship between pull factors and patient intention toward Egypt as a medical tourism destination. Also, this research presents an integrated approach to understanding the tourist's motivations and attempts to expand the empirical evidence on t he relat ionships between pull motives in order to determine the extent t o wh ich t hese m otivating factors will contribute to the overall perception of a destination. The research was based on a quantitative survey applied among 118 patients who traveled to Egypt as a medical tourism destination to receive treatment using snowball sampling procedures. Data were gathered online using (Google forms) conducted with t he patient who visited Egypt for medical treatment. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships among the model constructs. The research findings reveal that; both pull factors (healthcare provider-specific, destination specific) have positive impact on intention of patient. While, destination specific is the most effective pull factors. More specifically, the destination specific can be arranged as following: Environment and safety, Culture and historical attractions, then the tourism facilities. Moreover, the Healthcare provider service factors can be arranged as following: the service quality, waiting time, and medical cost. Finally, the results revealed six pull factor dimensions and t he resu lts of t h e correlation analysis indicate that significant relationships were found between t he six pull factor dimensions.