Looking over the fence: how travel medicine can benefit from tourism research

Bauer, Irmgard

Abstract

[Extract] After being a specialty for a quarter of a century, “travel medicine” is still very much about “medicine” with only limited consideration of pertinent “travel” or tourism aspects. Such aspects include a basic understanding of tourism theories and models, industry frameworks, and, most importantly, an insight into the traveling person who happens to be the declared focus of both medicine and tourism. Travelers do not travel within the context of medicine; they travel within the context of tourism. Before attending a travel clinic, the traveler has already been captured by a much larger structure in which he or she functions as a person with a distinct set of knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions relevant to the chosen trip. The same makeup influences also the behavior displayed from the point of leaving home to the return after the journey. The traveler participates in a global business, which has a keen interest in what this person wants and how the tourism product can best be delivered. For obvious reasons, this consumer of marketing, transport, accommodation, food, and activities is highly valued and studied by the tourism academia.

Journal

Journal of Travel Medicine

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1195-1982

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Wiley-Blackwell

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DOI

10.1111/jtm.12197