Medical tourism development in Dubai: Managing challenges and opportunities

Objective – 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 lists and combining it with a holiday. Dubai has established itself as a destination that can offer all this to foreign medical travellers. Methodology/Technique – 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. Findings – The study indicated several interesting findings regarding challenges such as highly dependence of UAE on foreign human resources, providing safety to migrant workers, implementing integrated medical tourism policy, global health insurance transferability, establishing legal and regulatory issues and others. Novelty – This paper has presented ground breaking findings indicating the issues faced by the Dubai Government regarding the growth and sustainability of medical tourism. The lack of direct access to the Dubai Government and medical tourists is a limitation of this study