September 24, 2011
Dear Readers,
In this article, I will mention “Birth Tourism” which there is not much in Turkish sources as “Visiting Friends and Relatives”.
Perhaps, some of you will say how this is a tourism type, Is birth a tourism, what is the connection, I never hear more before.
Actually, There are much unknown tourism types in English sources in tourism literature.
For instance; Dark Tourism. People go to war and natural disaster places in order to see these places. This is dark tourism. We can examine this subject later.
In Case You Missed It
Anyway, We examine birth tourism. When you examine and reach tourism literature, you will see that this is a tourism type.
All right, What is birth tourism and how is done? Pregnant people go to abroad in order to give birth two months ago from birth and they give the birth in the country which they went. Because of this, children takes the citizenship of this country. It becomes birth tourism.
The countries have to allow for this tourism. Today, USA allows for it as legal. However, in last times, USA wants to change the citizenship for birth. In more before, England and Australia was giving the birth citizenship, but they change this rule in the middle of 1980s(1).
The most widespread country is USA now. People from Turkey, Chine and Mexico go to USA for giving the birth and this number increases.
It is necessary to make clear that, people who join this tourism are richest than people who join general tourism event.
All right, where gets monet from birth tourism? Tour companies, hotels and hospitals get money from this tourism. For this reason, there are tour companies that added birth tourism package to their packages and this package is very expensive. If we give the example from Turkey, price of this package is between 25.000 and 40.000 $(2). The hotels in USA earn money from this tourism about 15.000 $ montly and people’s accommodation time is four months as before and after from birth(3).
I mentioned that Chinese and Turkish people go to USA for this event. For instance; since 2003 years, Turkish mother over 12.000 went to USA for giving birth(4). When we look at numbers, we see that it is not an exaggerated numbers in 7 years. It cannot be an exaggerated number. Why? Because, Mass is a rich mass and birth event doesn’t happen continuously. For this reason, participation number will be little.
Dear readers, in this article, I wrote a tourism type in order to make contribution to tourism literature. So, you have learnt a tourism type which you never hear more before.
Hayri TEMUR
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