The following article is based on data and targets published in June 2025. It is presented as an archival record of the sector's stated ambitions and performance metrics for that period.
Türkiye's health tourism sector entered 2025 with a target of attracting 2.5 million foreign patients and generating $6 billion in revenue, according to a Trade Ministry report published in June 2025 — double the $3 billion recorded in 2024 and representing a significant step-up from the 1.5 million patients received that year.
The ministry's data showed that the number of health tourists visiting Türkiye increased sixfold between 2012 and 2024, while health tourism export revenue quadrupled over the same period to reach $3 billion.
Agencies as a growth engine
Elif Ural, a member of the Health Services Committee of the Service Exporters' Association and a board member of the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TÜRSAB), attributed the sector's momentum to both healthcare quality and government support. She highlighted a 2022 policy shift that extended investment incentives — previously reserved for healthcare providers — to health tourism agencies, affecting 1,270 such agencies across the country.
"Thanks to the international patients brought in by those agencies, the hard currency inflow into the sector and the country has visibly increased," Ural said.
She also pointed to untapped sub-segments as a route to faster growth. "If other branches of health tourism in our country — such as thermal resources, senior tourism, accessible tourism, and wellness tourism — gain more traction, we believe we can reach our 2030 targets more quickly," she added.
The 2030 ambition is considerably larger: Emin Çakmak from the Turkish Health Care Travel Council (THTDC) stated in May 2025 that the goal for that year is to host 2.5 million health tourists and generate $25 billion in revenue.
Early 2025 data
Quarterly figures published alongside the report offered a baseline for tracking progress. Some 354,457 people travelled to Türkiye for healthcare services in the January–March 2025 period. Revenue from health tourism in the first four months of 2025 amounted to $643.4 million, equivalent to 6.9 percent of Türkiye's total tourism revenue in the same period.
Why it matters
For tour operators, DMCs and bedbanks active in the Turkish market, the June 2025 data underscored health tourism's growing share of total inbound revenue — 6.9 percent in just the first four months of the year. The 2022 extension of investment incentives to agencies rather than solely to hospitals signals a distribution-layer opportunity: operators that formalise health tourism packages gain access to the same support framework that helped drive the sixfold patient-volume increase recorded between 2012 and 2024. The $25 billion target for 2030 — more than four times the 2024 revenue base — implies sustained double-digit annual growth expectations, which would make Turkey one of the most consequential medical-tourism markets globally for the remainder of the decade. Investors evaluating hospital, wellness or thermal-resort assets in Türkiye would have found the incentive-expansion precedent particularly relevant as a de-risking signal.
