Analysis of the factors affecting the development of the health tourism industry: a case study of Mazandaran province, Iran

Health tourism is a branch of the tourism industry that is of interest to many countries of the world due to its high demand and good income. Therefore, considering the importance of health tourism and the existing potential in Mazandaran province, this study was conducted with the aim of identifying and analyzing the factors affecting the development of the health tourism industry in Mazandaran province.

The present study was conducted using a qualitative method with a content analysis approach. For this purpose, 17 health tourism industry experts and health tourists were selected using the purposeful sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The interviews were conducted until we reached a point of theoretical data saturation.

The findings showed that the health tourism industry in Mazandaran province is affected by structural, process and contextual factors. The structural factors included issues related to infrastructures, potentials/attractions, institutional factors, and expert human resources for health tourism destination. The process factor included issues related to drivers of health tourism, provision of health services and destination situational factors. The contextual-field factor included issues related to sociocultural contexts, potentials and attractiveness of tourism, and economic capacity.

Despite the importance of services related to health tourism and considering the increasing demand of this industry, travelers who travel to Mazandaran province need a variety of services, and the need to pay attention to quality service development in tourism destinations is evident. Therefore, the provision of other essentials for health tourists such as infrastructure, destination attractions, financial capacities, sociocultural conditions, human resources, situational factors are  the requirements for the development of this industry.