Health tourism in Türkiye’s statistics: what is counted and by whom

Türkiye's health tourism numbers come from two different places. TÜİK measures spending and purpose of visit through its visitor surveys, and revises them as health spending is refreshed. We could not find a Ministry of Health publication that gives an international patient count; its health tourism pages carry legislation and lists of authorised facilities and intermediaries. Press figures are usually TÜİK's purpose-of-visit count, not patient numbers.

Two people quote the same health tourism figure to you in the same week and the numbers do not match. Neither is lying. They are reading two different instruments, and one of them may have been revised since it was printed. This article explains what Türkiye health tourism statistics actually measure, who publishes them, why they move after publication, and how to cite each one so it survives being checked.

What counts as a health tourism statistic in Türkiye?#

Three kinds of number circulate, and only two of them are measurements: TÜİK's spending estimate, TÜİK's count of visitors who came for health reasons, and targets. A fourth, a Ministry of Health patient count, is often quoted and we could not find it in any Ministry publication.

TÜİK's spending figure is a money amount inside the tourism revenue tables, estimated from visitor surveys and card data. TÜİK's purpose-of-visit figure is a count of departing visitors who named health or medical reasons as the reason for their trip. Targets are numbers announced in plans and speeches, looking forward. When we checked, the Ministry's health tourism pages carried legislation and lists of authorised facilities and intermediaries, not a statistical series.

The three cannot be converted into each other: money is not people, and a plan is not a result. Whatever you quote, put the publisher, the table or report name and the release date in the same sentence, or the number will not survive a second reading. Where public data appears in your own documents, add the line: Public data. No endorsement implied. If you work with official tourism data regularly, the same discipline applies to reading and citing official Türkiye tourism data more broadly.

What does TÜİK's health tourism spending figure include?#

It is the amount departing visitors said they spent on health during their trip, estimated from three sources and published as one spending category inside total visitor revenue.

The 2025 figure is USD 3,022,452 thousand, about USD 3.02 billion, published in TÜİK's Turizm İstatistikleri, IV. Çeyrek: Ekim-Aralık ve Yıllık, 2025 (30 January 2026) (opens in a new tab); the 2024 figure in the same table is USD 3,022,957 thousand. The metadata names three inputs: the Departing Visitors Survey, the Health Tourism Survey and Interbank Card Center data. Two are surveys, one is card spending, and all three are combined into one estimate.

It is a spending category, not a sector revenue figure. It does not measure what clinics earn from residents of Türkiye, and it does not measure investment in clinics or equipment. It is reported at departure, so it carries sampling error and the visitor's own recall; treat it as a careful estimate, not an invoice total.

It is not a price list, and it is not a share. Do not turn it into a percentage of tourism revenue unless TÜİK publishes that share itself; a percentage you calculate is your number, not the publisher's. The figure also sits inside a larger revenue total, whose composition is explained in what TÜİK's 2025 tourism revenue figure includes.

How many health tourists does TÜİK count?#

1,398,580 departing visitors gave health or medical reasons (less than a year) as their purpose of visit in 2025, about 7.2% fewer than the 1,506,442 counted in 2024. Source: TÜİK, Turizm İstatistikleri, IV. Çeyrek: Ekim-Aralık ve Yıllık, 2025 (30 January 2026), table Geliş Nedenine Göre Çıkış Yapan Ziyaretçiler.

The category is a stated purpose of visit, recorded in the Departing Visitors Survey: the visitor says why the trip happened, and health or medical reasons is one of the options. Of the 1,398,580, some 250,401 were citizens resident abroad, people who live outside Türkiye and hold citizenship of Türkiye. This is one reason nationality and residence rankings give different pictures, the same effect that explains why source market rankings differ by nationality and by residence.

It counts visitors, not patients and not treatments. One person making two trips in a year counts twice; one person making one trip counts once. Companions are the blind spot: a partner or parent travelling with a patient usually states visiting relatives or friends, or other, so the people your hotel actually hosts are more than this count.

It is a departure count, not an arrival count: a visitor who arrives in December and leaves in January belongs to the year of departure. Read the trend, not the single year. A fall in the count does not by itself mean fewer treatments, because the purpose stated at departure is a survey answer.

Why do TÜİK's figures change after publication?#

Because health spending is refreshed from a separate survey, and TÜİK republishes the affected quarters with a revised marker when the new data lands.

TÜİK updates a reference year quarter by quarter, mainly as health spending is refreshed from its Health Tourism Survey. A worked example of the mechanism, on total visitor revenue rather than health spending: second-quarter 2026 revenue was first published on 31 July 2026 as USD 15,655,868 thousand, and appears as USD 15,661,610 thousand, marked revised, in the table released with the third-quarter bulletin. The revision is documented in TÜİK's tourism statistics metadata, revision number 17, release number 58144 (opens in a new tab).

Revisions are normal and can move either way. The size in the example is small; the point is that the number you saved in July is not the number you should quote in November. The practical rule: store the release number and date next to every figure you keep, and re-open the table before a board paper, a loan file or a partner meeting. If a counterparty quotes a figure you cannot find in the current table, ask which release it came from before you argue about it.

This habit matters beyond health spending; the same release discipline governs reading Türkiye's official tourism data month by month.

Does the Ministry of Health publish international patient statistics?#

We could not find one. The Ministry's health tourism pages carry legislation and lists of authorised facilities and intermediaries, not a statistical series with a definition and a latest figure.

What we checked: the health tourism department's site, the Sağlık İstatistikleri Yıllığı 2024, and the Ministry's 2025 news bulletin. We found no health tourism or international patient table in them. The consequence is that figures in the press labelled international patients, sometimes attributed to a public body, are usually TÜİK's purpose-of-visit count under a different name. The label changed; the instrument did not.

Older press figures for 2023 appear only in news reports with no official text behind them. Do not put them in a report. If a facilitator, clinic or consultant hands you a patient number, ask three questions: who published it, in which table, on what date. If there is no answer, treat it as an estimate.

This can change. Check the Ministry's site before you publish, and say in your document which date you checked. The Ministry's lists of authorised facilities and intermediaries are still useful, for verification of a partner rather than for market sizing.

Why the numbers never match, and how to cite each#

They measure different things: one is money, one is a stated reason for a trip, one is a plan. Trying to reconcile them is a category error, not a data problem.

Money, people and plans are three units. Never add them, never convert one into another, and never present a target as a result. A patient who bought a package tour may state package tour as the purpose of the trip, while the health spending still lands in the spending table; the two instruments can therefore move in opposite directions in the same year. The spending table covers all departing visitors' health spending, including citizens resident abroad, and the purpose-of-visit count also includes them, but a companion's spending may sit in another category entirely.

Targets belong to plans. The 12th Development Plan 2024-2028, for example, sets tourism ambitions of USD 100 billion in revenue and 82.3 million visitors by 2028; write them as ambitions, never as forecasts or results, and treat health tourism targets announced by ministries the same way. When two sources disagree, report both with their publishers and say what each measures. Do not average them. Add the line wherever public data appears: Public data. No endorsement implied.

A five-item citation check#

What should a hotel hosting patients and companions take from these numbers?#

Plan for people, not for a patient count. The statistics count visitors and spending; your operation hosts a patient plus companions, often for longer and on a different daily rhythm than a leisure stay.

Companions: the national count does not tell you how many arrive with each patient. Ask the facilitator or clinic for the companion ratio in your own bookings, and price the room product for two or three occupants. Stay length: a treatment course, recovery and a follow-up appointment stretch a stay, and the days are shaped by early appointments, rest and dietary needs rather than by the beach. The design logic is the same as in designing hotel service around average length of stay, only with a medical calendar underneath it.

Room product and access: step-free routes, shower seating, a refrigerator for medication, a safe, quiet floors, and travel time to the clinic matter more than view. Booking pattern: dates are set by the clinic and can move with medical clearance, so your deposit and cancellation terms should reflect a date that is not fully in the guest's hands.

Compliance: in Türkiye, every stay involves a payment, a fiscal document (an invoice or e-document), a guest identity notification (KBS) and personal data (KVKK). Health information is sensitive personal data, so keep clinical details out of the hotel's systems and out of staff notes; confirm your own duties with a legal adviser.

Partnerships: agree in writing who handles transfers, who is the night contact, and what happens if the guest must extend. A named person on each side prevents most problems. And never use a national spending figure to set a room rate. It describes a country, not your street.

What to do next#

Before your next board paper or facilitator negotiation, open TÜİK's tourism statistics yourself, note the release number and date beside every figure, and ask any counterparty for the publisher behind their patient number. The three objects, money, people and plans, then stay in their own columns, and the numbers you quote survive being checked.