Malaysia strives to be top Asian medical tourism destination

Malaysia is aiming to surpass Thailand and Singapore to become the top medical tourist destination in South-east Asia by 2020.

Sherene Azura Azli of Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council explains, “The main challenge is the lack of awareness about Malaysia as a health tourism destination. Middle East travellers go to Malaysia for a holiday but go to Thailand for medical treatment. We don’t shout loud enough about our unique value proposition in our marketing and communications.”

Plans include strengthening public partnership with all private hospitals involved in medical tourism and do more collective marketing in key markets to promote Malaysia as a top-of-mind medical tourism destination. These key markets include South-east Asia, the Middle East, China, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Kazakhstan.

In 2014, Malaysia earned RM730 million (US$191 million) in revenue from medical tourism and this year the target is to reach RM1 billion.