Identifying Goals of Strategic Alliances Case: Medical Tourism Businesses in Iran

Strategic alliances stand among the most prominent collaborations between businesses. In service businesses such as tourism, due to heterogeneity in key elements, dominance of SMEs and high sensitivity of the industry regarding the environmental changes, strategic alliances experienced more referrals. There seems to be no comprehensive study on how strategic alliances form in niche areas of tourism, like medical tourism, in Iran. This study focused on identifying the formation of strategic alliances among Iranian medical tourism businesses. Using snowball sampling, 17 experts in medical tourism were selected. Through semi-structured interviews, the data was gathered, and it was analyzed with MAXQDA10 software using theme analysis. Results showed that the goals behind the formation of medical tourism businesses could be categorized in eight key themes: 1) lifting legal barriers; 2) the contingencies of industry; 3) personal interests; 4) organizational goals; 5) customer-related goals; 6) strategic goals; 7) economic goals; 8) securing national interests.