Medical Tourism
ATLAS Special Interest Group
Medical Tourism
Coordinators:
Kai Illing – Apollon Hochschule der Gesundheitswirtschaft, Germany
The national and international mobility of people who aim to do something for their health has many different facets. As far as types of companies is concerned there are different one involved such as hotels, public baths, spas, regional entities, and even clinics and rehabilitation centers. As far as consumer needs are concerned, guest and guest-patients ask for relaxation, invigoration, prevention, healing, and body-styling. The SIG will have to make up its mind of how to delimitate from rest holiday and recovery journey that does not have anything to do with those types of tourism that have a stronger link to medical issues.
Another issue is how medical products or services are paid for. Health insurance companies or private insurance companies can play a role here, but people can also act as self-payers. Some companies pay for check-ups or treatments for their executives.
The analysis of global health data shows that the demographic development is leading to new impulses in tourism. Analyses lead to the conclusion that people are becoming more mobile in order to achieve their health goals. The reasons for the “new health mobility” are manifold and comprise better prices abroad, easier access to medical procedures, better medical supply abroad, warm climate and appealing nature abroad, and, last but not least, a better staff supply (e. g. retirement and receiving care abroad in specialized retirement homes).
This paragraph leads to the point that the international mobility in search of health does definitely need destinations that supply clean nature and a welcoming local population.
We understand the interaction of many influencing factors as dynamic system of interconnectedness that is driven by many players. The SIG is forcing the analysis of many individual aspects of the above-mentioned markets in order to better understand the overall system in the tourism-health-continuum.
ATLAS SIG Soundbite 17 – Medical Tourism
In the ATLAS SIG Soundbites series the different ATLAS Special Interest Groups tell about their SIG.
Annual review of activities – 2026
The activities of this SIG over the last year have been the following:
In 2025 the Apollon University of Applied Sciences (Bremen, Germany) renewed and renamed its Bachelor Course now called “Tourism Management in Health & Wellness”. It is one of the few Universities in Europe that offers a distant learning approach in that field.
In May 2025 we held our first online Meeting dealing with general issues in international health tourism.
In June 2026 we will have another online meeting that will focus on special issues such as international lifestyle migration, longevity in hospitality, international hospital mobility, and the future of wellness tourism. Link and date will be announced later.
Plans are underway to submit a research project targeting the international Lifestyle Migration. A fundamental difference in migration research is described by the terms “incoming migration” on the one hand and “outgoing migration” on the other. This proposal is aimed at people from the global North who decide to leave their country temporarily or permanently. The reason for that can be professional reasons, climatic reasons, price-related reasons, family reasons, or other reasons. The terms “retirement migration” and “lifestyle migration” (cf. Guan, 2018, p. 83; Horn et al., 2017, p. 337) are used to differentiate the term “outgoing migration” focusing on those who like to spend their later life temporarily or forever in warm and possibly cheaper countries. This group can be subdivided even further, differentiating in younger ones (30-55 years old), whereas retirement migrants are around 60+ years old (cf. Pickering et al., 2020, p. 2). We will have a closer look at health-related questions of lifestyle migrants (e.g. insurances, preventive self-care, use of out-of-pocket services). The purpose of the next meeting is to identify potential participants in this project.