This study contributes to advancing knowledge in health tourism by systematically identifying emerging themes and under-researched areas within its evolving landscape. The period of 1993–2025 was chosen to capture both the historical development and the most recent research trends, allowing a forward-looking understanding of future directions.
The data, encompassing articles published from 1993 to 2025, were extracted from the Scopus database. This research adopts a descriptive and analytical approach, utilizing the systematic review methodology. Through this process, over 3,600 articles and documents published in this domain were analyzed using VOSviewer software. Initially, a co-occurrence analysis of keywords, based on titles, abstracts and keywords, identified research clusters. Subsequently, the analysis of these clusters revealed existing gaps. Following the initial literature analysis, this study focuses on three approaches – supply chain, sustainability and uncertainty in health tourism as research gaps– and examines the clusters within these areas in depth. The identified gaps’ three-pronged approach was selected based on frequency analysis and cluster strength results from the bibliometric mapping, ensuring objectivity in their identification.
The results indicate that the research stream in sustainability, despite a significant number of publications, has not extensively inclined towards quantitative approaches and the supply chain perspective. Furthermore, the uncertainty approach has predominantly encompassed the risk perspective, which has been considered across various categories of health tourism.
The review indicates clear opportunities to (1) develop integrated frameworks that link supply chain management, sustainability and uncertainty; (2) expand mixed-method and quantitative approaches (e.g. optimization, simulation and multi-criteria decision tools) to support planning and performance evaluation and (3) translate sustainability and resilience concepts into measurable supply-chain components for destinations, providers and intermediaries.
Future research streams are likely to gravitate towards other concepts within the supply chain domain, such as lean, agile and resilient supply chains, and will experience further development in qualitative–quantitative and service–production areas, particularly within the wellness tourism sector.
