Health tourism and intangibility
Health and business with health-related products and services are a mega trend in the twenty-first century (Nefiodov, 1999). In tourism, service offerings based on health and wellness (health tourism) have become essential parts of suppliers’ product ranges. From a consumer perspective, health tourism can be defined as traveling for the maintenance, enhancement or restoration of wellbeing in mind and body (Carrera and Bridges, 2006). From a supplier perspective, health tourism can be defined as traveling to destinations which provide facilities and health-care services explicitly and in addition to their regular tourist amenities (Goodrich and Goodrich, 1987). These service offerings are by nature more or less intangible. According to Bielen and Sempels (2003), intangibility as a constitutive service attribute can be defined as a two-dimensional construct. In this context, the dimension physical intangibility refers to physical non-conceivability and the dimension mental intangibility refers to mental non-comprehensibility. The new service offerings in