Between health and tourism lies medical travel opportunity

This holiday, stop with the excuses and start the plan to rebuild your medical travel business, says Ian Youngman.  Just don’t base it on what you did before.

Having tracked the global medical travel sector for more than 20 years, I’m worried that many medical travel destinations, organisations and businesses seem to be treating the pandemic period as just a ‘hiccup’ in their normal way of doing business.

But the world has changed.

Tourists and medical travellers are making plans, or making then changing them, or perhaps most significantly not doing so at all, influenced by ongoing concerns over the effect of the pandemic, war and resulting global recession.

Stop with the excuses and look ahead

If you’re a medical travel business or destination, it may be tempting to use the factors above as excuses for the next few years to explain away problems of numbers or profit.

But, as the frustrated host of a business makeover TV series once said, after hundreds of businesses had used the previous recession as an excuse for failing: “Shut up with the excuses, we all suffered, that was then; the importance is what you’re going to do now to survive and succeed”

The medical travel sector must stop pretending that little has changed and start future proofing the business against current and inevitable future problems.

And it’s time to get on with it.  Medical tourism is now open or opening in most countries, with the big Asian guns of Malaysia, Thailand and India ready to fire their opening salvos at targeted tourists and medical tourists.

Although China is not yet open for inbound or outbound, my sources show that there’s a ground swell of individuals, organisations and businesses preparing for opening, but not wholly certain of when and what they will offer as they are not clear on how the world has or will change.

Between health and tourism lies opportunity

The WHO and UNWTO have both grasped that there are vital links between health and tourism at a county level, and are seeking to build a coalition of health and tourism partners.

In a joint statement, they’ve said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of building more sustainability and resilience into both economies and public health systems. Recognising the need to learn from the lessons of the crisis, the two UN agencies will develop their collaboration and strengthen cooperation.”

The WHO/Europe Small Countries Initiative (SCI) also sets out a case for promoting health and sustainable tourism in small countries, including the 11 European countries with fewer than 2 million people, saying “COVID-19 showed that any crisis that threatens the health, safety and security of people, communities and the environment is also a risk to tourism itself. Strong cooperation at all levels will place health high on the tourism agenda. It will make for healthy tourists, healthy communities, a healthy environment, and healthy economies for current and future generations.”

At a recent SCI summit in Montenegro, the 11 countries’ health ministers and delegates endorsed a vision to drive recovery in the post-COVID-19 era, by placing health at the heart of their tourism sectors.  Organised around the theme “Towards better health and well-being in small countries of the WHO European Region”, the event focused on two issues currently at the top of the agenda for small countries, namely emergencies (long-term prevention, health system preparedness, response and recovery) and developing healthy and sustainable tourism.

The resulting Montenegro Statement urged small and large countries alike to factor health and health financing into their efforts to revamp their tourism sector.

So what for medical tourism?

When countries and their tourism bodies and global organisations all see a massive link between tourism and health, why is medical tourism not making the connection?

There are exceptions with some destinations, but many places seem to be reverting to the old pre-pandemic selling methods and marketing messages. But now, there are many new things a potential customer wants to know including:

• How well did your country do with Covid?
• What is the current risk?
• Can you offer me a services package that effectively gets me to your treatment facility and back home, without having to stay/visit elsewhere?
• What tests do I need to enter and to stay in your country and how can you help with this?
• What happens if I catch Covid in your clinic?
• Why should I trust you?

There are other questions that need to be identified, but I have as yet not found any quality academic research into why current potential medical tourists decide if and where to go, their concerns and how service providers can answer their queries.

Homework

Think: why should customer X become a medical tourist, and then think: why should X come to you rather than a competitor?

Honestly, there is no one magic solution to rebuilding your business, as each case is different.  But to succeed rather than just survive, I suggest your holiday homework is to have a long look at what you do, how you do it, and how you promote to and interact with potential customers in this new world.