While the global economy is struggling to recover, people worldwide are careful about how they spend their money and are reducing vacation-expenses. Medical and healthcare travel keep going strong, thus, attracting the attention of public and private investors to this sector.
In answering relevant questions to the situation, challenges, and prospective growth of medical and healthcare travel , Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert, President of Medico Services International, based in Bangkok, shares his views about strengths and weaknesses stakeholders and actors of the combined sectors Medical-and-Tourism Industries are addressing.
1. How is your company currently involved in medical and wellness tourism?
Medico Management & Travel Services International Co. Ltd. is a global information, marketing, outreach and health-tourism consolidator, based in Bangkok. Through its worldwide outreach and consultancy activities MEDICO SERVICES addresses medical and wellness providers and specialists of all sorts, travel mediators, direct clients, who require assistance and direction-services within the medical-, spa & wellness-, hospitality & travel-sectors.
More information is available via = www.medico-services.com
2. What facilities / services do you offer medical and wellness visitors?
As consolidator MEDICO works with several selected international-level providers with whom it signed wholesale-/representation-contracts when they wish to reach new and larger markets. Upon receipt of enquiries MEDICO’s medical-referral advisors consider to which medical services-provider the clients in need of treatment are best be sent to. Clients then receive full “concierge services” from MEDICO which include, VIP-Welcome and fast-track at the airport upon their arrival, limousines (or ambulance) transfers, foreign-language escorts and tour-guides, appointments with medical specialists and requested hospitals, rehabilitation treatments after medical interventions, full control of invoices and accounting matters, special tours or treatments (spa, wellness, beauty) upon request.
MEDICO-Services is currently active primarily in Thailand (at a later phase more facilities in further countries will be promoted). MEDICO-Services has established cooperation and representation agreements with most healthcare travel providers in Thailand, comprising hospitals, complementary/integrative health institutes, leading-edge health resorts, day spa centres. Thus, any requested medical treatment (such as cardiology, neurology, oncology, gynaecology, orthopaedic, dental, eyes, plastic) in selected hospital and in cooperation with medical-specialists is available. On the integrative/complementary level weight-loss, detoxification, rejuvenation, massages of all sorts (Thai, Ayurvedic, Chinese) are available.
3. What plans for development do you have for attracting more medical and wellness tourism business?
As an accomplished academic and a tourism-industry veteran, MEDICO-Services President & CEO, Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert, has an in-depth comprehension of the all involved parties and the issues they address when working in this sector. MEDICO-Services under his guidance aims to improve the integrated cooperation among players in this niche-sector when it comes to legal and administrative issues, promotion, and services improvements.
Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert has drawn the attention of the regional Tourism Umbrella, PATA (Pacific Asia Tourism Association), to the growing importance of the Healthcare Travel Sector and initiated with them the ?PATA Healthcare-Travel Advisory Task-Force? which will survey and strive to formulate guidelines for governments, insurances, medical & wellness services providers, travel services providers, about standards, codes, and solutions. Under PATA umbrella a strong and inter-active network of professionals from all player-levels will be formed, which will be instrumental in empowering the Medical- & Wellness-Travel Sector, both sector-internal as well as towards travellers.
Finally, the creation and promotion of attractive all-inclusive packages for treatments and wellness seekers, combined with support from airlines, will become part of making healthcare travel solutions more accessible to more people.
4. How much of your business is generated by medical and wellness tourism and in which field of medical tourism is your company active in?
In principle, MEDICO-Services is dedicated to develop and improve the Healthcare Travel sector, and currently 80% of our revenues are generated from selling healthcare travel and relevant referral services.
A new, growing segment, however, are the professional events and conferences (MICE) in this sector with need for efficient understanding of both medical and tourism aspects in their organisation. Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert is frequented with requests for TV- and print-media interviews, and is often invited to present speeches at professional and relevant conferences.
This has also opened a side-line of professional consultancies for Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert, who assists governments with destination building seminars, hospitals and health-resorts with management and marketing improvements, and universities with research possibilities.
5. Are you looking to increase your business from medical and wellness tourism and if so, how?
Naturally our development efforts in this sector will lead to enhanced presence, improved reputation, and increased confidence in the abilities and services of MEDICO-Services. We hope and strive for achieving greater numbers of clients addressing us for assistance.
6. With which medical tourism facilitators / suppliers do you co-operate with and how do you collaborate with them?
We observe Healthcare Tourism as a multi-level platform of services providers, which we group under MEDICAL (Hospitals, Conventional Medicine), INTEGRATIVE WELLNESS (Complementary and Traditional Medicine, Health Resorts providing preventive or post-treatment life-style improvements treatments in a vacation-environment), SPA CENTRES (massages, rejuvenations, cosmetic treatments on daily basis, with no accommodation). Our quality-audit department is the entity selecting and evaluating the quality of such programmes (training of personnel, environment and comfort of treatments, quality and ingredients of products, quality of nutritional programmes, location and accessibility) before we include them in our promotions and marketing.
Thailand is a perfect destination in providing all sorts and types of treatments mentioned above. MEDICO-Services continuously communicates and exchanges experiences with its network of providers, striving to improve the levels of treatments, products, and client satisfaction.
7. What do you believe are currently the main challenges in the medical and wellness tourism industry, and what are the industry?s prospects?
Healthcare (medical, wellness, spa) Travel has existed throughout history. It is communication, technology, research & development, treatment methods, travel and mobility, which have immensely progressed in the past decades and have made global exchange possible. People will continue travelling in search of reliable and affordable treatments, some of which are also combined with vacation and leisure.
Where Professor Dr Zadok S. Lempert sees future changes are in the ?demographics? of healthcare travel. The Healthcare Travel sector is sensitive to economic and safety influences, whereas accessibility also plays an important part. This means that medical destinations will experience growth or decline in relevance to exchange-rates (currently people are rather on the saving side due to global/national economic fluctuations and fear for income-loss) in comparison with the prevailing treatment-rates imposed by the medical-providers at the various destinations (currently many hospitals have tendencies of increasing prices in having achieved certain market positioning). One also has to observe that many countries in the Middle-East/Gulf-Region are heavily investing in construction of hospital facilities which, once having achieved necessary know-how and quality levels, will probably attract many clients who currently use the South-East-Asian facilities to deviate to closer services.
Prospective-wise, Medical destinations will have to maintain or offer high levels of competitiveness and competence in offering top-end quality-treatments through medical specialists (and this might event mean that ?professional flexibility? should be reached in affording foreign specialists to practice in host-countries, not only national physicians) while maintain very competitive prices. Innovative ?medical supply? will attract and increase the ?medical demand?.
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