Leading organizational and economic models for the development of inbound medical tourism in Russia

Abstract

The paper is based on vast research of primary and secondary foreign and Russian scientific materials, qualitative interviews with foreign and home experts on the development of international medical tourism, as well as the analysis of the peculiarities of its development in Russia. Medical tourism represents one of the leading and most promises fields of tourism nowadays, so it is appropriate to call it a "leader" of tourism industry. The purpose of this research is to provide a comprehensive overview of current leading trends in medical tourism, mechanisms and models for the implementation of this type of activity, with an analytical focus on the situation in Russia. This paper examines the main organizational and economic models of the development of international medical tourism. Our research contributes to the development of effective mechanisms for carrying out organized and synchronized activities of all the parties involved, including stakeholders who arrange inbound medical tours, and promote Russia as a new major leading international destination for medical tourists from around the world. IntroductionTourism constitutes one of the most rapidly growing and most profitable spheres of economy. With many new fields of tourism such as heritage tourism, film and literature tourism, food tourism, or for example dark tourism (see

Changing Fertility Landscapes: Exploring the Reproductive Routes and Choices of Fertility Patients from China for Assisted Reproduction in Russia

“…One particularly popular destination as of 2015 is Russia, and in particular Moscow and St. Petersburg (Nikitina and Strielkowski 2018;Pan and Moreira 2018). In the following sections, I draw on interviews and online research to sketch how these new reproductive flows from China to Russia are beginning to map out, how (medical) service providers are responding to these demands and what ethical questions these developments raise.…”