Service Quality of Health Tourism In India: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach

Abstract

Medical tourism is also known health tourism, is defined as the practice of seeking and obtaining healthcare facilities across international borders with the assistance of tourism and hospitality industry. World Trade Organization and its General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has increased the liberalisation of the trade in health services. This trade has involved the movement of patients across borders in the pursuit of medical treatment and health care. Medical tourism corresponds to the “consumption of healthcare services abroad” under Mode 2 of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Major reason people travel across the world is to get specialised and high quality treatment in affordable price. Thus service quality is vital factor in medical tourism which has significant impact on satisfaction and word of mouth communication. This study identify the factors that are deemed to be imperative for service quality evaluation, furthermore it examine the influence of service quality factors on satisfaction and word of mouth communication. Data have been collected from patients and accompanying people. Former have received healthcare treatment while later have come to provide assistance for patients. Modified SERVQUAL was employed to measure the response, structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data and test postulated model. Two models have hypothesised (foreign tourist patients’ perspective and accompanying tourists’ perspective). Findings of this research ascertain the factors that have used predominantly to evaluate service quality in two different perspectives.