Diversified demand for health tourism matters: From a perspective of the intra-industry trade.

Previous studies on health tourism were limited to a small range of topics related to medical tourism. At present, the concept of health tourism has become profound because medical care has been altered from "disease-centered" to "health-centered". The main purpose of this study is to identify the key factors influencing the development of health tourism in China. To this end, in the first stage, an intra-industry trade theory was introduced and quantitative methods were applied to discover the important factors. In the second stage, multiple sources, including empirical studies, official data, research reports, and notably field investigations and case studies were incorporated to take in-depth discussions. The results indicated the foremost factors affecting the health tourism trade were total health expenditure per capita and the number of domestic health consumers. Notably, health tourism was substantially determined by the "willingness to spend on health" of domestic health consumers. In addition, Chinese health tourists were more likely to positively accept health tourism services in China. An important conclusion is that China should diversify health tourism offerings for different consumer groups. Once diversified products for health tourism are provided, the number of health tourism consumers will soar accordingly, which thus contributes to forming economies of scale, lowering the average costs of health treatment, increasing health tourism profit, and stimulating economic development.

The discussion of traditional Chinese medicine health tourism development / 国际中医中药杂志

Traditional Chinese medicine health tourism based on the rich Chinese herbal medicine resources and tourism resources, supported with the broad and profound traditional culture of Chinese medicine, is a new form of the combination of the traditional Chinese medicine and the tourism industry. In recent years, it has been different levels of development around the country. On the basis of summarizing research at home and abroad, the author makes in-depth analysis of the connotation and denotation of traditional Chinese medicine health tourism, the main way, development status and the existing problems, and puts forward the corresponding solutions to these problems.