Polish aesthetic medicine market in the context of Swede's beauty tourism : High-quality, low-cost services towards demanding Swedish patients

Abstract: This thesis concerns Swedes’ medical tourism to Poland with an indication of  travelling for beauty treatments. Its goal is to study Swedes travelling to Poland because of aesthetic medicine purposes. Trips with medical background, e.g. surgeries, dental treatments or spa/wellness tourism were not taken into account in this assignment. However, in many aspects, some of this data were also included because of the unavailability of more precise sources. The aim has also been to try to reach an insight in what kind of factors and motivations cause that more and more Swedes choose to seek medical help in Poland. The goal has been also to show how the future of this kind of tourism could look like. The study is based on qualitative interviews with clinics and medical centres performing those treatments and patients/customers with such an experience. The theoretical framework concerns laws and regulations, also personal motivations and needs. I came to the conclusion that there are several reasons for people to travel to Poland for medical services: relative low costs of treatment, high quality of service and technology, short waiting periods, insignificant cultural differences and geographical proximity of both of the countries.