The evolving expectations and demands of medical tourism visitors

Maria Todd CEO of Mercury Healthcare International discusses the future of the medical tourism Guest Experience and the evolving expectations and demands of medical tourism visitors and their companion travellers.

When you decide to attract a specific segment of high-spending leisure travellers to your medical tourism or wellness offer, you should expect that they will demand a quality guarantee on the hospitality and culinary aspects of their stay. Not just a safe, high quality medical spa, cosmetic surgery, or preventive health service but a true Executive Check-up.

One project I am working on in Greece is focused on developing a national medical tourism brand strategy. They have asked me to propose a smart start for handful of pilot projects in medical tourism that will produce rapid turnovers and build national brand awareness and one of my proposals will be a virtually-integrated health tourism cluster. As a part of that, when developing their integrated health tourism cluster, I will propose that they include hospitals, clinics, spas, health resorts, hotels, and gastronomy providers as well as taxi drivers and destination managers. The key to success is to develop a seamlessly integrated product that delivers a medical or wellness tourism experience; not a surgery or a check-up. People come to buy an experience. They can buy a check-up or surgery anywhere else that sells medical tourism. What will differentiate them? A unique health, wellness, or medical tourism experience that can’t be purchased outside of Greece.

Where does it start?

The criteria to be included in the virtually-integrated health tourism program is key. At Mercury Healthcare International, we had no less than about 300 criteria that we went through on inspection and situation assessment before we opened a market for our Executive Check-up program. Our brand standards were very high and very demanding, we validated what they said in their websites and advertising collateral, and if they passed inspections, our board of directors and advisors voted on their admission to our network. All this is in the past tense. We’ve since sold the program and now focus 100% on strategic consulting and training in health, wellness and medical tourism program and product development.

The process was quite long because we really wanted to target the best in terms of quality. But this quality check was just the beginning, a prerequisite, what we would love to find was a certain spirit, certain values and experiences across the entire supplier value chain; not just the hospital or clinic. This is what our inspectors and I would seek when we visited new applicants. A medical tourism supplier for our executive check-up program could not join our provider network if they didn’t provide five experiences touchpoints:

1. the culture of the destination,

2. the compassion of the medical and hospitality teams,

3. the nursing and therapeutic care,

4. a celebration of the senses (including gastronomy), and

5. exceptionally attentive service from each employee and staff member encountered.

We need to feel this when we visited the providers of service from wheels down of the aircraft to the demeanour of the driver, to the hotel check-in, to the spa or clinic, and all the way back to wheels up at the airport. We also needed to experience this on mystery shops, not just on revealed inspections, and we sought consistency when we elicited feedback from clients to ensure they felt it too.

The destination

Each medical tourism destination is deeply rooted in the region with a specific culture; we should feel the spirit of the destination when we visit a wellness, health or medical tourism property. This is what we call the “culture of the land,” which is the first experience we needed to find in a MHI Executive Check-up destination. The the compassion of the medical and hospitality teams is also so important. We looked for more than just technical quality and price or accreditation certificates on a wall because we wanted to feel that soul on inspections and from the testimonials of our clients.

At our peak, we sold about 1800 Executive Check-up packages per year. The average age was around 48 years old, which is a decrease from five years ago when it more than 50 years old and we noticed that markets like South America and Asia attracted clientele was much younger than European or North American clientele. Our clients were also executives, they travelled often at a certain level of service and quality. Once a company did business with us, our clients were very loyal with a repeat customer rate between 50 percent and 85 percent. Once a guest tried our Executive Check-up destination experiences, they returned the following year to explore a new destination and a new experience. In terms of source market, 60 percent came from North America and the other 40 percent were working expats stationed in other places working for North American companies. The average spend for two people for a week in this program was about USD $7500, plus business class (or private charter jet) airfare. You must know your source market, its culture, expectations, age, gender, socioeconomic and educational levels. If you cannot meet and exceed the source market’s demands and expectations, you won’t attract customers because they have the means and sophistication to go anywhere.

Keeping visitors happy

Using this experiential approach to develop your medical or wellness tourism product means that you need to find boutique hotels – those with 30-38 rooms, a spa on premises, impeccable service, amazing gastronomy and wine choices, and the hospital or clinic within a 5-mile radius along a picturesque surface road, not passing through industrial areas, slums, or requiring a drive on freeways that have constant traffic jams. One thing I would always balk about was, for example, the Bumrungrad Executive Check-up experience. Yes the clinic is superior. Yes, the Westin and Sheraton were within walking distance. Yes the whole experience was affordable. But the traffic jams on Sukhumvit beginning at 3:30pm are horrendous! The sidewalks are crowded and in terrible condition with broken concrete and uneven surfaces. Shop keepers all but accost you to check out their shoe and tailor shops. After dark, Soi NaNa Nua is very off putting for most women, it reminds me of a Turkish bazaar more than the experience I want to find in Thailand. You have to know your clients and source market demands and expectations to design the right package and recommend the right product to the client.

High-spending executive health check-up travellers are not going to be thrilled if they wake up and can’t tell where they are. They travel for business all the time. Most of them stay in Marriotts, Hiltons, Hyatts and other corporate chains for those trips. That’s not the experience they seek for their medical or wellness tourism package though. Make a better world through better health, cuisine and hospitality. Seek out boutique hotels and spas that practice sustainability, hospitality, impeccable service and produce a memorable experience. They will not settle for just a consultation with a doctor, some blood tests, an electrocardiogram and x-rays. They can check into the Marriott or Hilton or Sheraton and get those services anywhere, in fact, they probably don’t even need to travel to get that.

Commit to something that goes further than the sum of its elemental parts. Deliver a unique experience of the destination. Identify the source market demands and expectations. That’s what I have in mind for the Greek national medical tourism quick start pilot program.