Healthy prognosis for medical travel

BERLIN Medical tourism has grown into a healthy travel sector as people shop beyond their borders for everything from dental work to plastic surgery, according to experts at Berlin’s ITB travel fair, last week.

This year is the first that the global tourism show set aside space in the halls of the German capital’s congress centre for medical tourism.

Health tourism is already worth billions of dollars per year and set to grow at up to 25% annually over the coming decade, according to a recent study by Visa and Oxford Economics.

“Thanks to the internet, a growing middle class, often from countries without high-quality healthcare, know that there are treatments out there for them,” said Medical Travel Quality Alliance president, Julie Munro, which produces a ranking of the 10 best hospitals for medical tourists.

But medical tourism is not limited to a few countries, nor to people from wealthier nations travelling to less pricey ones.

Countries like the United States, Turkey, Thailand, Singapore, Spain and Germany see both inward and outward flows, as patients dodge waiting lists or hunt for care that is either unavailable or too expensive in their own country.

“You have medical tourism globally,” said Thomas Boemkes of marketing firm and ITB partner Diversity Tourism.

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