HEALTH TOURISM AND STATE SUPPORT AND INCENTIVES

Abstract

Health tourism is the one of the sectors that has experienced an increase in service exports in recent years. As expected, globalization, development in communication technologies, development in transportation facilities and prolongation of waiting times in health services,  increased cost pressures have been the most important factors in the increase in  the number of health tourists and income. Health tourism, which has become one of the important issues of the country’s tourism policies, adds value to the income of the country economically and provides opportunities that include not only "health" but also other tourism activities, as a reason for the use of existing opportunities.For this high value added sector, national policies, government support and incentives play an important role in development of this sector.  The number of health tourist visited our country in 2003 increased from 139.971 to 662.087 in 2019, and income increased from 203 million dollars to over one billion dollars. There has been a significant increase in the type and rate of incentives  given by government. In this paper, state support and incentives in health tourism are discussed conceptually.

JEL Kodları: H51, Z30, I1