ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF HEALTH TOURISM VISITORS WITH GOOGLE TREND DATA

Abstract

The aim of this study is to test the explanatory power of the number of searches on Google search engine regarding the concept of Health Tourism on the number of foreign visitors coming to Türkiye for health and medical reasons. In this context, the number of foreign nationals visiting Türkiye for health tourism between 2013 and 2023 and the results of Health Tourism searches for Türkiye on a global scale during the relevant observation period are used as data. Google Trend data provides data on the proportional level of health and medical searches for Türkiye, while the number of foreign visitors to Türkiye in the same period was obtained from the Tourism Statistics data published quarterly by TUIK. In the study, the explanatory power of Google Trend data on the number of foreign visitors was tested using regression analysis. The findings indicate a strong correlation between the number of health tourism foreign visitors and Google search results and show that the change in one-lagged Google Trend searches has a positive and statistically significant effect on the number of foreign visitors in the current period. The results of the study reveal that Google Trend data can be used in forecasting the demand for health tourism and that these data can be an important tool in the formulation of health tourism policies. As a result, it is seen that both policy makers and sectoral actors operating in the field of health tourism should closely follow the search engine query results in question and offer an important data source for possible health tourism-related planning activities.