Factors influencing on choosing medical tourism destination by Myanmar medical tourists.

Abstract

Nowadays, the world economy has an eye on non-smoking industries such as tourism sector which has less effect on the environmental pollution, where medical tourism is one of the components. This continuously growing industry of medical tourism attracts international medical travelers around the global and the market is getting very competitive among famous medical tourism destinations. According to the statistics from some famous medical tourism destinations in Southeast Asia region, Myanmar is one of the top markets and many thousands of outbound Myanmar medical travelers are seeking healthcare overseas every year. Lack of studies and previous researches about Myanmar medical tourists causes missing an opportunity to address the consumer behavior of outbound Myanmar medical tourism market. This exploratory research is to study the decision making of outbound Myanmar medical tourists and identify the decisive factors influencing on choosing their medical tourism destination. This research applied qualitative approach with the use of semi-structured open-ended research question as research instrument. This individual face-to-face in-depth interview is participated by 30 respondents with various and vibrant characteristics where the respondents are those who experienced as medical tourist at least once at the time of interview. The result of this study revealed that traveling convenience as the most influence decisive factor for Myanmar medical tourists. Then it is followed by quality-concerned factors such as quality of cares and services, physician training, and availability of medical facilities and services on decision making. Cultural distance is the less decisive factors influencing Myanmar medical tourists to choose their medical tourism destination. Moreover, it is also elaborated some new emerging decisive factors of outbound Myanmar medical tourists such as presence of hospital representative offices and strong recommendation by friends and family. The findings of this study might be able to provide a foundation for further academic studies and market researches on this particular interest, more specifically on outbound Myanmar medical tourists. Moreover, it can also give a solution or an idea for policy makers, healthcare organizations and tourism-related service providers in both local and destination countries.