Traditional Health Tourism and Integrative Wellness Approaches A Systematic Review of Global Trends, Structural Constraints, and Ethical Governance

The contemporary global tourism economy is increasingly shaped by health- and wellness-oriented mobilities, reflecting broader transformations in how health, care, and well-being are conceptualized, governed, and consumed across borders. This article presents a systematic scoping review of Traditional Health Tourism (THT) and its intersection with integrative wellness paradigms, with particular attention to structural, epistemological, and ethical dimensions. Moving beyond conventional distinctions between medical tourism and wellness tourism, the review examines how historically embedded medical systems—most notably Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and diverse Indigenous healing traditions—are incorporated, translated, and commodified within transnational wellness markets. Guided by the PRISMA-ScR framework, peer-reviewed literature published between ۲۰۰۵ and ۲۰۲۵ was systematically identified, screened, and thematically synthesized. The findings depict a sector characterized by rapid expansion yet pronounced institutional fragility. Strong state support and sustained global demand coexist with regulatory fragmentation, epistemic asymmetries, and persistent ethical contestation. While countries such as India and China have strategically mobilized traditional medicine as a component of national branding, cultural diplomacy, and soft power, integration with biomedical systems remains largely instrumental and surface-level, constrained by ontological and methodological incompatibilities. Most critically, the commercialization of traditional and Indigenous knowledge frequently proceeds in the absence of equitable benefit-sharing, robust consent mechanisms, or recognition of collective intellectual rights, generating dynamics analogous to biopiracy and cultural extraction. The article concludes by advancing an ethical governance framework grounded in epistemic justice, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), and reciprocal benefit-sharing, offering normative guidance for the sustainable and equitable development of Traditional Health Tourism and integrative wellness tourism.

کلیدواژه ها:

Traditional Health Tourism ، Integrative Wellness ، Ayurveda ، Traditional Chinese Medicine ، Ethics ، Governance