Turkey seems ambitious enough to disrupt global medical tourism streams for its own advantage
By Arno Maierbrugger/Gulf Times Correspondent/Bangkok
The buoyant tourism industry in Turkey has made health officials think about benefitting from the surging international medical tourism business, especially for wealthy health travellers from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
While Thailand remains the world’s leading destination for health tourists including those from Arab countries, Turkey seems ambitious enough to disrupt global medical tourism streams for its own advantage.
According to the Turkish health ministry, Turkey in the recent years has emerged as a popular health tourism destination for visitors from the Middle East and Europe due to “significant improvements” in health services and technologies as well as due to its convenient geographical location for both target groups. For example, the flight time from Doha to Istanbul is just above three hours, while it takes seven hours to reach Bangkok.
Latest numbers from the World Tourism Organisation show that out of roughly 35mn tourists who visited Turkey in 2013, a new record of 188,095 visitors came for surgical procedures such as hair transplants, liposuction, as well as cancer and orthopedic treatment. In the first six months of 2014, the number already stood at 162,445 and half-year revenues in the sector added up to $328mn. More promotion is to be expected when the next Istanbul Medical Tourism Fair will be held in May 2015, and by the end of the next year the number of health visitors should reach 500,000, the ministry believes.
The number of tourists that visited Turkey in 2013 from 15 Arab countries including the six GCC nations increased by 9% compared to the previous year and reached 3,265,190 people, according to statistics from Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. A growing percentage of those visitors came to Turkey for health purposes, says Cem Polatoglu, spokesman of the platform of Turkish tour operators.
“I have heard that 7,000 Arab tourists came to only one clinic in Istanbul to have hair implantation last year,” he notes.
Turkey’s health ministry hopes to reach the $20bn mark in medical tourism revenue by 2023, and expects 15-20% annual growth in the sector. It says that Turkey is now sixth in the global ranking of medical tourism destinations as per visitor numbers behind Thailand, Mexico, the US, Singapore, India and Malaysia.
However, to reach Thailand’s numbers Turkey will still have to make a great leap forward. The Southeast Asian country welcomed 2.5mn health tourists in 2013, around one third from the Middle East.
Cleared by those who were just coming for spa or wellness treatment, the number was still around 1.3mn travellers seeking surgery and other medical procedures. But unrest in Thailand and the subsequent military coup earlier this year has taken its toll.
Private hospitals popular with foreigners such as Bangkok Hospital or Bumrungrad Hospital saw a drop in medical tourist numbers in the double-digit percentage range so far in 2014.
Local competition has been heating up from Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and for Arab travellers, well, from Turkey, which can easily compete with Thai prices for health services that used to rise significantly over the past years.
Two recent and widely reported cases of malpractice by unlicensed beauty surgeons in Bangkok that led to the demise of two foreign patients aren’t helping the Thai health tourism sector either.
