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The home-is-safer-than-abroad bias is quite substantial in tourism. In times of uncertainty, home-like, domestic, and what is known is much more trusted. This paper explores how the diaspora population might be instrumental in rebuilding medical tourism for countries with migration-intense populations.

Theory-based adaptation leading to the shift of perspective in medical tourism. Scientific evidence, international organisation reports and media outlets’ publications were analysed. This work is a continuity of ongoing diasporic medical tourism (DMT) research.

Diasporic medical tourism represents a group of “hidden consumers” that pioneered medical tourism in certain countries. They are non-negligent in volume, continue to travel to visit friends and relatives (VFR tourism category) despite economic and societal upheavals, and often follow a “home-is-safer-than-abroad” bias. Therefore, they represent a substantial group of potential consumers, especially in times of uncertainty.

Medical tourism has become very competitive. Countries and companies need to look for post-pandemic consumers’ new behaviours and new avenues to develop medical tourism.

Despite the diaspora being even a majority of medical travellers in certain countries, this sub-segment has not been adequately addressed in academia. This paper highlights the importance of DMT in uncertain times (post-pandemics, fragile economic environment) and the opportunities and constraints it presents, thus addressing a critical gap in the literature.

The interest in medical tourism is due to the increasing number of scholarly publications on the subject. Polish researchers are progressively contributing to this discourse, shedding light on various research contexts within one of the prominent medical tourism destinations in Central and Eastern Europe. This article is aimed at mapping the knowledge of and outlining the directions for developing medical tourism research in Poland.

The study was conducted in the form of a bibliometric review, including performance analysis and science mapping. The analysis included texts by Polish researchers indexed in the international Web of Science and Scopus databases and the Polish BazEkon database. In addition, publications found in Google Scholar, Nauka Polska (Polish Science) and Biblioteka Nauki (Library of Science) were included. VOSviewer was used for the bibliometric analysis.

A total of 97 scientific publications from 2003–2023 were studied. The analysis provided an insight into the main themes of Polish researchers from the perspective of the discipline they represent. Five clusters were identified: (1) “global aspects of medical tourism,” (2) “medical tourist,” (3) “development of medical tourism,” (4) “Poland as a medical tourism destination” and (5) “medical tourism destinations worldwide.” On the one hand, an interdisciplinary approach to medical tourism makes it possible to gain broader knowledge that goes beyond one scientific discipline. On the other hand, the results show the diversity of medical tourism research and the dilemmas involved.

The limitation of this article is the analysis chosen, which does not consider the scientific quality of the articles studied. Instead, we identify leading and future issues that should be of interest to researchers and used by practitioners and managers of medical tourism destinations.

The review and subsequent mapping of scientific output made it possible (1) to understand the different perspectives on the definition of medical tourism, (2) to assess the 20-year contribution of Polish researchers to the development of medical tourism research and (3) to identify key contexts for further research.

Medical tourism, characterized by patients leaving their home community to seek health-care services elsewhere, is on the rise globally. In New York state, approximately 5% of the 35,661,559 hospital visits in 2018 were non-residents. Although some are visiting New York for other reasons, and unintentionally wind up hospitalized – a percentage of this population come to New York intentionally to seek care. Understanding the make-up, needs and patterns of this population allows hospitals to tailor investments in marketing, technological resources and culturally responsive initiatives to prepare for broadening their patient population and remain competitive globally.

Using a rich all-hospital discharge data set, the authors identify patterns in diagnoses, treatment and hospital choice of patients who intentionally travel across borders for health care. The authors model the characteristics associated with “elective” admit patients with a multivariate logistic regression approach.

The authors find that among non-resident patients in New York, domestic travelers, those using insurance plans for payment and women are positively associated with seeking elective inpatient care across border. There are clear patterns of type of treatment that is more likely to be sought, with care for musculoskeletal concerns accounting for more than one-third of all non-resident elective admissions. Proximity also matters, both in terms of patients being more likely to live in a travel zone adjacent to the state, as well as being more likely to seek care from hospitals in counties closest to the borders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study, using a large set of claims data, that is able to empirically differentiate between patients who travel to NY for the primary purpose of obtaining health care versus those who emergently must access care while traveling for other reasons. This approach can inform future studies seeking to better understand patient migration patterns and strategic educational and marketing initiatives to motivate consumers to cross borders to seek care.

The study aims to facilitate the medical tourists visiting emerging countries for various kinds of ailments by ranking the possible destinations to avail medical treatments.

A Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP) with a mixed-method approach is applied to analyze data collected from patients and substantiate it with medical tour operators in India to gain managerial insights on the choice-making patterns of the patients.

India is a preferred emerging market location due to the low cost and high medical staff quality. India offers value for money, whereas Singapore and Thailand are preferred destinations for quality and technology.

The study will facilitate the emerging markets' governments, hospitals and medical tourists to understand the importance of various determinants responsible for availing medical treatment outside their country.

The study recommends that cost and quality care are the patients' prime focus; government policies must provide clear guidelines on what the hospitals and country environment can offer and accordingly align the marketing strategies.

This study is the first attempt to rank various factors affecting medical tourism using the FAHP approach.

The purpose of this paper is to identify Poland’s image as a medical tourism destination (MTD).

Survey data were collected from 282 German and British medical tourists, using a self-administered questionnaire. The Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing method was used to conduct the survey. Subsequently, the responses were analysed using advanced statistical tools (McNemar’s exact test, Cochran’s Q test and Chi-square test).

Before visiting Poland, the respondents perceived the country through the prism of medical attributes, whereas after the visit, they perceived it through the prism of non-medical attributes.

Identification of a set of MTD image characteristics has important implications for scholars, allowing them to understand attributes which shape projected and perceived MTD image. Such construct can also be a useful tool for marketing planners, destination managers and marketers to create an effective marketing policy and projected image of MTDs based on these features.

The study fills an important gap regarding the lack of conceptual and empirical content allowing for exploration of MTD image.

This study aims to expand tourism knowledge by analysing literature review articles published in English Web of Science (WOS) and Chinese China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) language journals and reviewing their influence, interconnection and trends.

A three-stage method was designed to understand the tourism research progress. Performance analysis identified the publication timeline, high-yielding journals and authors that published tourism literature reviews and frequently cited papers. Science mapping visualisation examined the intrinsic connections between co-authorship and co-institution. Finally, emerging trend analysis explored the topic modelling and evolution through Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and regression.

The key statistics and collaborations relationships of tourism literature reviews were traced. LDA identified 45 and 22 topics, which narrowed the barriers in tourism studies. The regression analysis divided these topics into “hot”, “fresh”, “bell-shaped” and “stable” patterns. These modes represent the progress of tourism studies. The topic “new emerging technologies and the internet” is the focus of tourism literature reviews published in both databases. Future research could pay more attention to the topics in the “hot” and “fresh” patterns. The results enrich the progress of tourism literature reviews and provide a direction for future research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first literature analysis for tourism literature reviews published in WOS versus CNKI journals. The proposed three-stage systematic method is used for the first time for the literature review and can guide future research.

本研究旨在通过分析英文WOS和中文CNKI语言期刊上发表的文献综述文章, 回顾其影响、相互联系和趋势, 来扩大旅游知识体系。

本研究设计了一个三阶段方法来了解旅游研究进展。绩效分析确定了出版时间线、发表的旅游文献综述的高产期刊和作者以及经常被引用的文章。科学地图可视化审视了合作作者和合作机构之间的内在联系。最后, 新兴趋势分析通过潜在狄利克雷分配和回归探讨了主题建模和演变。

本文追踪了旅游文献综述的关键统计数据和合作情况。潜在狄利克雷分配确定了45个和22个主题, 这缩小了旅游研究中的研究缺口。回归分析将这些主题分为“热门”、“新鲜”、“钟形”和“稳定”模式。这些模式代表了旅游研究的进展。主题“新兴技术和互联网”是不同数据库中发表的旅游文献综述的焦点。未来的研究可以更多地关注“热门”和“新鲜”模式中的主题。研究结果丰富了旅游文献综述的进展, 为今后的研究提供了方向。

这项研究是首次对WOS与CNKI期刊上发表的旅游文献评论进行文献分析。所提出的三阶段系统方法首次用于文献综述, 可以指导未来的研究。

El objetivo de este estudio es ampliar el conocimiento turístico analizando los artículos de revisión documental publicados en revistas, tanto en la versión WOS en inglés cómo en CNKI China, y revisando sus efectos, interconexiones y tendencias.

Se ha diseñado el método de tres etapas para comprender el progreso de la investigación turística. El análisis del desempeño determinó la línea de tiempo de publicación, las revistas de alto rendimiento y los comentarios de la literatura turística publicados por los autores, así como los artículos citados con frecuencia. La visualización de los mapas científicos, examina los vínculos intrínsecos entre los autores colaboradores y las instituciones colaboradoras. Finalmente, el análisis de tendencias emergentes explora el modelado temático y la evolución a través de posibles asignaciones y regresiones de dilick-ray.

Se han analizado las estadísticas clave y las relaciones de cooperación de la revisión de la literatura turística. La asignación potencial de dilich-ray identifica 45 y 22 temas, lo que reduce las barreras en la investigación turística. El análisis de regresión divide estos temas en patrones “populares”, “novedosos”, “en forma de campana” y “estables”. Estos modelos representan el avance de la investigación turística. El tema “tecnologías emergentes e internet” es el foco de la revisión de la literatura turística publicada en diferentes bases de datos. La investigación futura puede centrarse más en temas en modelos “populares” y “novedosos”. Los resultados de la investigación enriquecen el progreso de la revisión de la literatura turística y proporcionan una dirección para futuras investigaciones.

El estudio es el primer análisis documental de los comentarios de la literatura turística publicados en las revistas WOS y CNKI. El método sistemático de tres etapas propuesto se utiliza por primera vez en la revisión documental y puede guiar futuras investigaciones.

16 queries, performed on the two systems, resulted in 247 unique relevant references from EMCS and 559 from TOXLINE. The overlap varied considerably, from 6 to 50%. It is remarkable that TOXLINE, with nine subfiles specially compiled for toxicology can be supplemented by EMCS, which in the present study delivered 31% of all the unique references.

The purpose of this study is to find out the factors that influence dental travelers’ revisit intention (RI) to Tijuana, Mexico.

Based on the push and pull model, five constructs were included: quality service, price, supporting services, cultural proximity and quality information. The information was obtained by applying an online survey to a sample of 384 dental tourists in Tijuana, Mexico, who were repeat patients of a dental clinic in Tijuana after the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory factor analysis, average variance explained and composite reliability were conducted to ensure the validity of each construct. Multiple regression analysis was done to identify predictors of travelers’ RI.

The results obtained show that cultural proximity, quality service, price and supporting services influenced the travelers’ revisit behavior after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on travel behavior in dental tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, which has been scarcely studied. Also, RI was analyzed, focusing on repeated travelers to propose a model mainly for borders or frontiers where developed and developing countries co-exist and interact.

The results of searches on biological, medical and veterinary subjects by both the E.M. automated retrieval system and MEDLARS were compared. Of a total of 60 E.M. searches 23 were selected for the comparative study. Seven were eliminated because these needed specific terms not present in the MEDLARS terminology and 30 were omitted for other reasons. In 17 searches MEDLARS produced more relevant references than E.M. On the other hand in 12 searches the precision of E.M. was higher than that of MEDLARS. An average precision of 55 per cent was found for E.M. and of 38 per cent for MEDLARS. In 12 searches the cause of the failure to retrieve known relevant references was investigated. In MEDLARS 28 per cent was due to inadequate journal coverage and 72 per cent to indexing or searching failures (total 71 failures); in E.M. these percentages were 8 and 92 respectively (total 160 failures), the last percentage including an unknown proportion due to selective indexing of journal contents. Of 226 relevant references from E.M. and 467 relevant references from MEDLARS (the total retrieved in 15 searches), 94 references were duplicated. Recall figures were estimated: an average recall of 18 per cent was found for E.M. and 33 per cent for MEDLARS. Search strategies and indexing of overlapping references were compared. An estimate was made of the extension ratios of 12 searches. This measure averaged 1.9 for E.M. and 2.8 for MEDLARS.

Diaspora tourism primarily refers to various population groups, including migrants, foreign workers, political refugees, ethnic and religious minorities and overseas communities living away from their ancestral homeland for various reasons. Throughout history, people have been forced to leave their original homeland due to various factors ranging from economic crises to natural and human-made tragedies, including war. The 24 February 2022 unjustified and unproved Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which started on the heels of the two-year COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in massive and terrible consequences for many domains of political, economic and social life. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has generated the largest historical migration flows at a scale unforeseen in Europe since World War II. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, at least 12 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations. The unprecedented influx of the Ukrainian people raises concerns about future developments, issues and challenges associated with Ukrainians' presence in other countries, particularly neighbouring ones. Therefore, this chapter analyses the possibility of diaspora tourism for Ukrainians shortly by utilising a critical approach when the situation stabilises in Ukraine. To begin with, this chapter first explains diaspora tourism with its definition and characteristics. Furthermore, it reviews the literature on the Russia–Ukraine war and its impact on Ukrainian tourism. In conclusion, it discusses the new Ukrainian diaspora wave soon.