ESTIMATING THE ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION OF MEDICAL TOURISM IN ROMANIA BASED ON THE TOURISM SATELLITE ACCOUNT DATA

Abstract

Medical tourism is a form of tourism with real development prospects in Romania being supported by phenomena such as the aging of the population or the high expenditure associated with medical treatments in other countries, as compared to ours. Consequently, this form of tourism has begun to be exploited more and more by various local companies operating on this market. Meanwhile, assessing the size of the medical tourism sector is important and it can support any public policy in both health and tourism sectors. The purpose of this paper is to present the economic dimension of medical tourism in Romania derived from the existing statistics of the Tourism Satellite Account as the main statistical tool at macroeconomic level implemented in Romania since the reference year 2011. The experimental calculations revealed quite a poor level of the size of medical tourism in Romania, with a contribution of only 0.05% to GDP in 2015. At the same time, it is necessary to extend the research in this field by adding other data sources that should capture all types of expenditures related to medical tourism, especially in the case of Romanian tourists who represent the dominant segment of tourism demand.