A Biobjective Approach to Assigning Recreational Activities to Medical Tourists

Abstract

Medical tourism is a growing market due to cost savings for patients and access to
treatments unavailable in their home country. Countries offering high-quality medical
services at affordable prices have great opportunities for growing their revenue and shares
in this market. To increase the welfare of tourists and revenues associated with healthcare
tourism, this study proposes a mathematical model for planning the integration of
recreational activities to the medical schedules of healthcare tourists. The model achieves
this by providing access for medical tourists into appropriate recreational activities based
on their medical conditions, availability schedules, and budgets. The proposed integer
programming model maximizes a weighted sum of total tourist satisfaction points and
profits generated from assigning tourists to recreational activities. It incorporates medical
restrictions, ensuring that medical tourists are directed to activities suitable for their
medical conditions. The Pareto-efficient frontier for patient satisfaction and company
profit is determined utilizing the integer programming model. The proposed model aims
for a higher quality experience for medical tourists, optimizing their access to recreational
activities while promoting economic growth in the health tourism sector. Computational
tests demonstrate that the proposed model efficiently solves instance sizes that may arise
in practical contexts and enables iterative solutions for obtaining Pareto-efficient
frontiers.