Medical Hotel – Connecting Hospital and Hospitality in an International Context

Medical tourism is a niche of the health tourism industry considered to have a rapid development in the last ten years. Studies related to this new concept have started to be published and researchers still analyze definitions and particularities. Considering the fast evolution of the medical tourism industry, the article focuses on the need for research on the medical hotel concept, one of the elements with a substantial contribution of this business. This paper aims to identify if the characteristics of medical hotel are regulated by national or international norms and to study the coherence of health hotel classification criteria in European context. We applied qualitative methods by exploring second data provided by several published researches results, books, articles, by visiting hotels related to the medical tourism industry, interviewing professionals and joining forums and seminars organized by medical/health tourism associations and clusters. The results revealed the lack of harmonized hotel classification at European countries level and the lack of medical hotel regulation in European context. In addition, Romania, a country recognized for its tradition in balneary tourism fails to align and implement the European criteria equally from the point of view of general hotel classification and the definition and regulation of the health or medical hotel.