Medical Tourism: A History and Overview of the Industry and the Case Study of Addiction Recovery in Spain

This paper focuses on the emerging global market in medical tourism. The industry continues to expand and become increasingly profitable with greater popular support. This paper conveys the findings of a literature review on the origins, history and contemporary development of the industry. It explores the rationale and access of the medical tourist, and the purported benefits and costs to involved parties including patients, caregivers, citizens and governments. Ultimately it reveals that this phenomenon leads to lower costs, better care, discretion and leisure benefits to wealthy and mobile international clients while reducing available resources and quality of care for residents of host countries, which are mostly low and middle income countries and potentially costing source countries in aftercare. This paper examines the case study of international treatment for addiction in Spain and analyze two websites advertising the treatment for their use of promotional tactics, the importance of place and the relevance of Wilbert Gesler’s therapeutic landscape concept in marketing services. This reveals that international mobility allows businesses to profit from permissive legal environments and popular therapeutic landscapes abroad.