INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDIES PUBLISHEDON WOS BETWEEN 2013-2017 IN THE FIELD OF HEALTH TOURISM WORLDWIDE

Abstract

The aim of this study, is to examine studies searched on WOS in the field of health tourism worldwide in the last five years in terms of different variables. The study's universe is made up of the WOS databases from 2013 to 2017 and includes studies with the words “health tourism”,” medical tourism”,” thermal tourism”, “disabled tourism”, “ elderly tourism”  and “spa-wellness”. Only "research articles" were examined. In total 212 articles were identified, of which 160 were reached and examined according to criteria determined by the researchers. In the studies, which is reached as full text, "Medical Tourism" was the most commonly used keyword. It was determined that the studies were mostly published in 2015 (45) and English (149) was the commonly preferred language of the studies. It has been found that the studies conducted are mostly written by two authors (43) and the authors of all 160 studies mostly work in departments related to Health, Business Administration and Geography. Studies in the field of health tourism were made mostly in Malaysia (18), Korea (16) and Canada (13), respectively. In the studies examined, focus group interview / deep interview / interview technique (40) was used as a research method. *This paper is an extended version of the study which was presented in 8th International Health Tourism Congress in Aydın, Turkey