Health care sector increases share in tourism revenues

ISTANBUL

Türkiye’s health tourism generated more than $643 million in revenue, corresponding to 6.9 percent of the country’s total tourism income in the first quarter of 2025.

In 2024, 1.5 million people visited Türkiye to receive health care services, spending more than $3 billion, a 5 percent share in the country’s tourism revenue. In 2023, health tourism’s share in total was 5.4 percent.

From January to March this year, around 345,000 patients visited Türkiye, according to data from International Health Services Inc. (USHAŞ).

Global health tourism presently generates approximately $100 billion in revenue, with this figure expected to increase to $127 billion by 2028.

Türkiye has set itself an ambitious goal of reaching $20 billion in health tourism revenue by 2028.

Back in 2015, only 429,000 people traveled to Türkiye for health care purposes, with revenues from health tourism at $746 million. For the first time, the number of health tourists surpassed the 1 million mark in 2022, when revenues amounted to $2.2 billion.

An environment has been created to help healthcare service providers and intermediaries conduct their activities more easily and in a result-oriented manner, said Behlül Ünver, general manager of USHAŞ, adding that Türkiye has started to reap the rewards of its recent efforts in health tourism.

He recalled that the “Health Türkiye” platform has been launched to coordinate the health tourism industry.

The platform will help track which health institutions provide which services, Ünver said, adding that health care services providers need to register with the platform.

Ünver stated that Turkish Airlines also offers discounts for guests coming to Türkiye through the platform.

There are approximately 5,500 accredited health care facilities in Türkiye involved in health tourism, along with around 1,275 intermediary institutions, according to Ünver.

“Within six months, all of these are expected to become members of the platform. If they are not members, it will mean they won’t be allowed to engage in health tourism activities,” he explained.

There are more than 11,000 health institutions with a total hospital bed capacity of around 271,000 and over 1.4 million health care professionals in the country, according to data on the website of Health Türkiye.

According to Turkish law, the health care provider and intermediary organizations should obtain international health tourism authorization certificates from the Health Ministry in order to operate within the scope of international health tourism.