Medical tourism development in Dubai: Managing challenges and opportunities

International medical travel is one of the fastest growing and lucrative segments of the tourism industry of this century. In the past, affluent people from Middle Eastern countries travelled abroad to the UK or USA for medical surgery and not wealthy citizens from developed countries are seeking affordable, accessible, world class quality of healthcare with modern medical technology, no waiting list and combining it with a holiday. Dubai has established itself as a destination that can offer all this to foreign medical travellers. This paper is exploratory in nature and provides a conceptual study to investigate the expansion, challenges and economic opportunities for developing, promoting and managing Dubai as a medical tourism destination, which is a unique contribution to the theory of medical tourism management. Dubai is a global cosmopolitan city; cultural and business center, popular tourism destination and is the most diversified economy of the Middle East. Dubai can be a regional hub for medical tourism, with the Dubai Health Authority strategic plan of promoting medical tourism to the world and attracting 500,000 medical tourists by 2020. The lack of direct access to the Dubai Government and medical tourists is a limitation of this study.