Tourism planning
Farahnaz Abolhassani; Ali Zangiabadi; Alireza Jabbari
Abstract
As a subgroup of health tourism and industry with high potential, medical tourism plays an essential role in the sustainable development of the health tourism industry as a link between the medical and tourism sectors. The present study attempts to identify effective key drivers by examining and analyzing ...
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As a subgroup of health tourism and industry with high potential, medical tourism plays an essential role in the sustainable development of the health tourism industry as a link between the medical and tourism sectors. The present study attempts to identify effective key drivers by examining and analyzing key factors and uncertainties in medical tourism development to present a model to improve the current process of developing medical tourism programs in the Isfahan metropolis. The applied study employed documentary and survey research techniques (cross-impact questionnaire) based on new foresight, analytical, and exploratory methods. The statistical population consisted of 35 urban tourism planning experts, city managers, and tourism researchers (21 managers and experts and 14 researchers) selected by the snowball sampling method. The Delphi method was employed to collect the data. The MicMac software for data analysis used the cross-impact analysis method of variables. The results of the dispersion of the variables in the axis of influence and influence of the factors indicate the system's instability in the development of medical tourism in the studied area. Finally, according to the high direct and indirect impact scores, nine main factors were identified as key drivers in the future development of medical tourism in the Isfahan metropolis.
