The salient place brand factor(s) influencing medical tourism to South Africa

Regardless of its importance to the globaltourism economy, there is still limited academic inquiry relating to Africawithin the context of non-traditional tourism typologies, such as medical tourism.This article contributes to the broader understanding of the potential factorsinfluencing medical tourism by extending place branding theory to the decision-makingprocess of tourists within the South African medical tourism context. Thepresent study examines the place brand - medical tourism nexus using datagenerated from a sample of n=233 conveniently sampled inbound tourists. ExploratoryFactor and Multiple Regression Analyses were applied to the data. It emergedthat South Africa's socio-cultural place brand was found to be a statisticallysignificant heuristic cue, positively influencing medical tourism to thecountry, pivoting aspects such as the country's cultural practices and colonialheritage, as some of the key considerations in the decision making the processof tourists when considering South Africa as a medical tourism destination. Critically, the results associate medicaltourism with the socio-cultural profile of South Africa, through the placebrand as a heuristic cue for information symmetry. The study enriches bothplace branding and medical tourism discourse by providing empirical evidence ofthe nexus between the two constructs. Practically, destination marketers areprovided with critical insights into tourist perspectives, and it isrecommended that African governments and medical tourism facilitators collaborateto develop a nation branding theory-based framework as a decision support modelfor proactively managing and communicating the image of South Africa as amedical tourism destination