Health Tourism

The purpose of this paper is to discuss what is meant by health tourism. This paper seeks to explore the relationships between travel, tourism and health in the UK and abroad. This study is intended to provide a concise analysis of the spa and health tourism as a product in both Europe and USA. It also briefly discuss the recent rise of 'medical tourism', the result suggests that the market for the medical tourism will continue to expand. Another objective of this paper is to briefly examine the minor and major health problems that typically face the international traveler and how these associated health issues can in principle, be prevented from adequate health precautions.

As the health tourism market in United Kingdom is similar to that in North America, The English Tourism Council adopted the North America definition: 'health tourism encompasses those products and services that are designed to promote and enable their customers to improve and maintain their health through a combination of leisure, recreational and educational activities in a location removed the distraction of work and home" (ETC, 2002).

Health

Gunboat Smith (LOC)

Smith Street, Warwick - no's 55 to 61 Smith Street

Laws (1996) regarded health tourism as leisure taken away from home, where one of the objectives is to improve one's state of health. In another word, is an activity or leisure selected by choice, or undertaken by people to escape from their usual work or home environment as a consequence of enhancing their health. As Douglas, Douglas and Derrett (2001) suggested, the activities or leisure is often related to health spas or visits to seaside resort, the authors also identified that younger travellers may satisfy their health related needs by seeking at adventure and sports tourism destinations.

As Mueller and Kaufmann (1999) noted '…wellness is pursued solely by "healthy" people…' which is the creation and maintenance of health...