IIB INTERNATIONAL REFEREED ACADEMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES JOURNAL Temmuz-Ağustos-Eylül 2014 Sayı: 15 Cilt: 5 Yaz Dönemi July-August-September 2014 Issue: 15 Volume: 5 Summer Term Jel: Z00 www.iibdergisi.com ID:393 - K:408 229 HEALTH TOURISM IN TURKEY AND PRACTICAL EXAMPLE OF ITS ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS Murat KORKMAZ 1 , Ayhan AYTAÇ 2 , Ali Serdar YÜCEL 3 , Bülent KILIÇ 4 , Fikriye TOKER 5 , Sefer GÜMÜŞ 6 1 Güven Group A.Ş. Finance Director 2 Trakya Üniversity Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Economy Master of Science 3 Fırat Üniversity, School of Physical Education and Sports 4 Orthopedist and Traumatologist 5 Trakya Üniversity Health Management Master of Science 6 Beykent Üniversity Institute of Social Sciences Abstract: Turkey has made significant progress in health tourism within the last 20 years and began to compete with the most successful countries in health tourism. Also, the income obtained from health tourism has an important impact on the income obtained in health sector in Turkey and makes great contribution to the economy. This study aims to investigate the place of health tourism in health sector and its impacts on it. Within this context, various statistical data regarding the spending on health and health tourism between 2004-2013 was used. The data obtain from TUIK (Turkish Statistical Institute) was analysed via PASW Statistics 18 (SPSS-Statistical Package for Social Sciences) package program. Within the scope of the analysis, frequency tables and regression tests were used. The research findings illustrated that private hospitals were preferred more in health tourism, Germany, Bulgaria and Iraq are among the countries that send most health tourists, service is obtained more in other branches and eye and oncology fields and health tourism income is affected by the number of the tourists. The results of the study indicated that foreigners make up 70% of total health tourists in 2013, the rate of health spending in health tourism is 2.3% and health tourism income increased total heath income significantly. Key Words: Tourism, Economy, Health Care, Process, World, Competition, Industry INTRODUCTION Tourism activities considered as old as human history, has reached great dimensions today. Tourism, defined as the science, art and trade of attracting tourists and providing service to tourists has gained a quality that expands investments and work volume, creates incomes, provides foreign exchange, creates employment areas, meets the social and humanitarian functions affecting social and cultural life (Küçükaslan, 2006:2). The need to diversify tourism has become a reality for our country. Many opportunities are available for our country to diversify tourism (Hacıoğlu and Şahin, 2008: 35). In this regard, health tourism brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk