As we see the medical, travel and health tourism markets begin to recover, we are seeing a growing surge of publications, communications, webinars and other information about these markets.
I was just on a webinar recently where the presenter was talking about the importance of building trust in the “medical tourism” markets.
Well, it’s important to remember that health and medical travel markets are not one market.
They are highly fragmented regional markets where consumers travel either because they want services or they need services. And the difference between consumers who travel for hair transplant or cosmetic procedures is profoundly different from those who travel because they are unable to get cardiac or cancer care or orthopedic procedures where they are. So the motivations are very, very different, and those markets are very different, and the direct-to-consumer tactics that would work in the hair transplant market simply won’t work in the medical services markets for cross-border trade in care.
The emphasis that was also made in this presentation is about trust. And certainly trust is an extraordinarily high standard human value that we all cherish. But trust in the health tourism markets is very different from trust in the medical services market.
The medical services markets are episodic. People don’t go back for more than one orthopedic procedure. At least we hope they don’t. Cancer is treated perhaps only once, but over a series of treatments, whereas somebody that goes for a relaxation spa treatment may indeed return to that same destination or not.
So the dynamics of trust are very different. In all of these cases where an individual or family is traveling to receive health, wellness, or medical services, they’re moving through the unknown. They are depending on certain benchmarks in the medical space. They’re depending on their doctors or their insurance providers or a party to the insurance provider called the third-party administrators. They’re depending on others to help them make these very important, usually once off, singular decisions.
In the health space, there may be the need for other symbols or assurances in the form of accreditations and standards, but these operate at a different level in each of these markets. So my hope is that you will discriminate between the marketing for the low-acuity, high-volume services for cosmetic services and health tourism or the wellness services and health tourism, and those very complex high-acuity and low-volume services for cardiac care, cancer care – the really complex procedures.
And as always, for more information, I hope you’ll be in touch.