Predicting the Medical Tourism Demand of Turkey

There is an emerging need in understanding the trends and determinants of the medical tourism industry, which have a significant impact on the host country’s economy. Turkey’s popularity as an international tourism destination combined with the expertise of Turkish medical professionals and advanced technology available in the leading medical facilities make Turkey one of the most popular travel destinations for medical tourism. While the expanding literature on medical tourism offers conceptual and theoretical knowledge on this topic, the number of empirical studies is somewhat limited. Forecast of medical tourism demand is a critical input into decisions related to investments in healthcare, tourism, and transportation infrastructure. This study models Turkey’s medical tourism demand incorporating several factors. Due to the relatively high number of indicators and a small number of observations, Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) was employed to predict the response, and the results were compared with those of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation. The empirical findings are expected to help policy makers and practitioners to deepen their understanding of medical tourism demand for Turkey.