Healthy profits

Agents can harness medical tourism demand.

The move is hoped to attract more than 200,000 medical tourists in 2013 and the overall aim is to overtake Thailand and Singapore to become Asia’s prime medical tourism destination. But other countries have had a head start on South Korea, especially in a more mature European market.

Switzerland-based Swiss Medical Consult director Dr George Sebastian said Switzerland was a natural choice for medical traffic because of the established quality of its healthcare and facilities.

“In terms of Middle Eastern medical tourists, Switzerland has the added benefits of its fantastic shopping and malls,” he added.

And Dr Sebastian said he was aware of the potential of the Middle East market when he was training as a doctor in Germany.

“We had a ward full of Saudi Arabian patients who would travel to Germany for all their medical needs,” he said.

Their medical system wasn’t developed enough and they would have to travel 200 miles to their nearest local hospital.”

And the benefit for travel agents would be there when the company becomes fully-operational later this year.

“Any travel agent sending clients to be treated in Switzerland by our company will get money for their work,” Dr Sebastian said.

Travel Agents

It all sounds too good to be true, a rapidly expanding sector in an otherwise bearlike market. So why not start signing up clients and sending them on their way?

According to Dr Jagyasi, it’s nowhere near as simple as that.

“It’s a very challenging business — healthcare providers are highly monitored; you have to ask how do you promote your services; what are patients’ needs and can you assure them on all pre-operation and post-operation needs?” he said.

“How do you identify the good healthcare providers and do you charge the patient or the provider and then you have to always expect the unexpected?” he added.

Furthermore, there was the issue of establishing a target market, finding how best to market the services being provided and, ultimately, how to convince clients you are offering them a service.

“There are many fine details in this industry that you need to know about and you need to understand the process of it,” Dr Jagyasi warned. Many companies have understood that the medical tourism industry is not a service that is easily tacked on to an existing business model. This has led to a rapid growth in tour operators and agencies solely dealing in medical tourism.

Indian-based Sahara Medical is one of these one-stop solutions and its range of expertise, contacts and services is impressive and clients enjoy having all the arrangements for their trips in one place.

“These companies negotiate a good deal with the providers and get a 20% to 25% discount, which they then use as their service charge or commission,” Dr Jagyasi explained.

“The client is happy because they felt comfortable and didn’t have to book everything separately without any knowledge of the services on offer.”

Dr Jagyasi advised tour operators looking to tap into the market to become members of the Medical Tourism Association, where members had access to the latest information and guidance.

The message is clear — healthy patients can mean healthy profits, but make sure you know all the implications of the sector or risk sending your business to the morgue.

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