Promotion of Reproductive Tourism through Websites in India

Abstract

Reproductive tourism as one of the subsets of medical tourism is attracting substantial attention in Indian milieu and academic discourses. There are bundle of reasons for development of this particular spatial mobility wherein stakeholders have a crucial role to play. Role of every associated stakeholder in development of reproductive tourism is different in nature. Within this premise, service provider as one of the stakeholders, operating in the form of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) clinics has a pivotal part. These clinics market their services through websites and persuade prospective service users by presenting attractive tailor-made content. Role of these clinics’ websites functional in India has received less emphasis and the present study seeks to fill this academic void. Through content analysis of selected 87 ART clinics and surrogacy clinics’ websites, the present study will underline the role of websites in promotion of reproductive tourism in India. The analysis pointed that information of various nature is being displayed on the website wherein service provider views their target population in a dual patient-tourist identity. Moreover, these websites tactfully present the content having greater potential for tapping the service users and thus, contribute significantly in attracting reproductive tourists in the country.