The Development Guidelines of Health Tourism in Phuket to Become a Medical Hub

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to 1) explore the health tourism situation in Phuket, 2) to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of health tourism in Phuket, and 3) investigate the opportunities and challenges to create the linkage between medical tourism and wellness tourism entrepreneurs in Phuket. Qualitative research was conducted. The key informants were the representatives from medical service providers and holistic wellness providers in Phuket, which have high potential in offering this kind of integrated services. Purposive sampling using In-depth interviews with content analysis were applied.

                   The results showed that 1) most of medical tourists in Phuket were from Australia, China, Russia, and Middle East who use medical agent services. 2) the strengths of Phuket health tourism were the famous and world-class well-known location, reasonable price and service quality, many hospitals with JCI certified, safety, skilful medical staff and variety of health service programs. On the other hand, the weaknesses were marketing staff’s lack of knowledge in health tourist behaviour and lack of experts in holistic wellness; 3) the entrepreneurs of medical tourism in Phuket are interested in searching for allies in creating a linkage between related health tourism services in order to add more value to their products and create selling point to gain competitive advantage for Phuket health tourism.