Medical travel from north – east India: an assessment of domestic medical tourists’ travel profile and experience

ABSTRACT

A significant segment of the global medical tourism industry is dependent on domestic medical tourists (DMTs)—the buyers of biomedical services within a country. However, in medical tourism in South Asia, academic and policy attention has primarily been paid to the international consumers despite the fact that a large part of the medical tourism business is dependent on domestic buyers. By gathering sporadic shreds of evidence on patients’ travel under the theme of domestic medical tourism, this study explores the differences in travel motivation and experience amongst the DMTs based on their socio-demographic and treatment profiles. In Northeast India, this study observed that demographic factors (age and gender) have the least impact on the movement of DMTs, while social factors (state of residence, sources of finance, nature of visitation) remain significant determinants. We also observe that amidst the chaos of regional disparity in healthcare resource allocation and need-based travel within restrictive medical travel conditions, DMTs are happier and more eager to travel to destinations which, apart from providing medical help, promise diverse tourism activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic medical tourists
• global south
• Northeast India
• travel profile
• motivation
• domestic medical tourism experience

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the stakeholders of the Kolkata medical tourism industry and all anonymous respondents involved in this study for their great support and active participation during the survey. We are very grateful to the reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).