Medical tourism communication of a Thai private hospital website

Abstract

The growth of medical tourism has led to a change in the customer base from local to international, presenting a challenge in how to communicate with these potential new patients. In this paper we use the tools of social semiotics and corpus linguistics to analyze two versions of a Thai private hospital website, one from 1998 before the growth of medical tourism and one from 2010 when roughly half of all patients at the hospital were international. The findings show that, although some differences can be attributed to developments in website capabilities, the 2010 website uses several strategies to build social relationships, involve the audience and engender trust with the goal of establishing the hospital’s credibility for an international audience.

What Lies Underneath a Political Speech?: Critical Discourse Analysis of Thai PM’s Political Speeches Aired on the TV Programme Returning Happiness to the People

“…in Thailand; in tourist areas; in a society). Similar findings were obtained by Carreon & Todd (2013a) in their investigation of private hospital websites in Thailand. While these findings shed some light on the data under investigation, stronger conclusions cannot be drawn since absolute frequencies reflect general language use but not the specific linguistic features of a text.…”

“…While plausible, investigating ideological discourse such as political speeches is quite complicated since political speeches are meant to address issues within the period the speech was written and delivered. This means that timeframes within which data is acquired need to be specified and generalizations across time need to be downplayed (Carreon & Watson Todd 2013a). It was also noted that while scripts for political speeches are prepared, some of these scripts were not read, partially read and in some, the spoken contradicts the written version.…”

International Trade and Health in Thailand: A Scoping Review

“…Studies on trade in health services could provide guidelines for improving the business sector in response to Thailand’s medical hub policy, as could studies on the needs and motivations of foreign tourists aiming to make use of Thailand’s medical tourism services [ 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”

“…Key findings from the studies in this category pointed out the opportunities for Thailand from its medical hub policy and medical tourism. Although Thailand has always been a tourist destination, there is room for improvement regarding meeting the needs of medical tourists as well as for the business sector and the country as a whole to gain more benefits, such as improving hospitals’ websites and engaging in proactive marketing [ 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”

Multimodal Communicative Acts of Thailand’s Private Hospital Website Promoting Medical Tourism

“…Several studies have investigated online medical tourism promotion in Thailand. Carreon et al (2013) examined how private hospital websites in Thailand communicate with their potential medical tourists using the tools of social semiotics and corpus linguistics. They discovered that the websites used several strategies such as including interior images of the hospital building as well as a world map in the homepage to highlight the strategic position of the hospital.…”