Abstract Eleven 1999

GLOBAL

DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Volume One Winter 1998-Spring 1999 Numbers 3-4.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

HEALTH TOURISM: A NICHING STRATEGY FOR MARKETPLACE SURVIVAL IN CUBA

Sharon L. Oswald Tony L. Henthorne

Department of Management Department of Marketing

Auburn University University of Southern Mississippi

Auburn, Alabama 36849 Hattiesburg, MS 39406

Published online: December 15, 2016

ABSTRACT

The Cuban health care system has long enjoyed a worldwide reputation for superiority in medicine. However, with the dismantling of the Soviet Union, this reputation was not providing the hard currency necessary for the country's economic survival. Health tourism, a specialized, under-served niche in the hotly competitive realm of Caribbean tourism, became the shining star of the Cuban government's hope for resurgence into the global marketplace. With the exploitation of health tourism through a for-profit entity, Cuba appears to be heading down a path untraveled for nearly four decades.