Turkey plans free health zones to attract medical tourism

Turkey will establish free health zones to attract patients from overseas, says health minister Recep Akdağ, “With the free health zones, we will make Turkey more attractive as a country offering high quality and affordable health services. 200,000 people visited Turkey in 2011 as health or medical tourists, and just under half are medical tourists. Political and economic stability have made Turkey attractive.” New regulations from the Ministry of Finance give a 50% tax exemption for private sector health tourism revenue.

Turkey will establish free health zones to attract patients from overseas, says health minister Recep Akdağ, “With the free health zones, we will make Turkey more attractive as a country offering high quality and affordable health services. 200,000 people visited Turkey in 2011 as health or medical tourists, and just under half are medical tourists. Political and economic stability have made Turkey attractive.” New regulations from the Ministry of Finance give a 50% tax exemption for private sector health tourism revenue.

Dursun Aydın of the Ministry of Health says that in the last three years, Turkey’s health tourism industry has seen annual growth of 30%, “In 2011 200,000 patients came to Turkey within one of the three subcategories of health tourism; medical, thermal/wellness and senior tourism. We are expecting the number of tourists in this category to increase by 30% a year and a 100% increase in revenue. Our estimate for 2012 is near two billion dollars.”

Aydın believes that the biggest potential in health tourism lies in thermal and senior tourism, “In terms of thermal tourism, Turkey has seen a number of developments and investments. We are working on additional legislative regulations on thermal tourism. We have also worked on legislative arrangements regarding the health standards of accommodation facilities. Thermal tourism is progressing with speed and will grow in Turkey.”

While many countries are attractive to retired people who want to live in warm inexpensive countries, there are few places targeting senior tourism. These people go to Turkey in the dead season, the winter and spring months, and fill accommodation that otherwise would be empty. There is a problem in including senior tourism within health tourism figures as if Turkey includes them it could be argued that Spain could add millions of winter retirees to its health tourism figures, and some senior tourists are not seasonal, but all year round.

A report by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce states that Turkey must evaluate the important opportunity of health tourism among alternative tourism categories in order to take full advantage of its tourism potential. Turkey is located at the crossroads of continents and is one of the most visited places in the world. The report says:” Research conducted regarding private hospitals active in health tourism suggests that at present it is not sufficiently systemized. The data reflects that either the statistics of private hospitals are missing or that it is not known how much the activity of a hospital impacts the sector as a whole, or even if these hospitals are willing to play an active role in the development of health tourism. Many hospitals follow a pricing policy based on short-term profits and lack a general pricing structure. Advertising and commercial activities are unprofessional.”

The report says that if $700 average spending for each patient is taken into account, health tourism provides significant advantages. For example; if a patient undergoing cancer treatment stays in a Turkish hospital for an average of 30 nights, estimated earnings are 10,000 euros.

Other benefits of health tourism are listed in the report, including:
• Providing a solution to low occupancy rates at hotels.
• Diversifying the customer base.
• Contributing to the formation of a positive image of the country worldwide
• Creation of job opportunities.
• Diffusing the regional concentration of tourism locations.

The report says that Turkey is doing well but needs to identify target markets and determine strategies for advertising in these markets and the services to be provided, as well as the right pricing policies and collaboration with other sectors and subsectors.