PLANNING FOR HEALTH TOURISM: FROM WHAT “SOURCE LOCATIONS” DO CUSTOMERS NOW TRAVEL TO MY DESTINATION?
Give careful thought to travelers to your area who are arriving for leisure, recreation, business, or family visits. These potential travelers could be familiar with your area and are often predisposed to consider additional services including wellness, health, and medical care. It is very insightful to analyze why travelers come to your area or region. This information is often available through tourism or economic development offices and convention and visitor bureaus in your location.
- Business & commercial activities
- Special events
- Travel packages
- Recreational – indoor/outdoor
- Cultural, ethnic, or spiritual
- Family & friends
- Sports
- Returning diaspora
Some information about health and medical services may be available from official or unofficial sources. The challenge is how to convert current guests, with varied motivations, into guests who purchase health services.
In addition to city, regional, or national travel data, there are global resources such as:
The World Travel Monitor: https://www.ipkinternational.com/en/worldtravel-monitor
Tourism Statistics: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php?title=Tourism_statistics
UNWTO Tourism Statistics: https://www.e-unwto.org/toc/unwtotfb/current
Who else might be interested in your services and/or your destination?
Are there other audiences you could target with information and messages about your area and services? Certain destinations – Turkey and South Korea, for example – provide simple healthcare packages to cruise passengers. These travelers often have free time at hand and may be motivated by conveniently accessed and affordably priced dental and health check-ups, as well as simple spa treatments, like facials. If your destination attracts mostly young adults, would older travelers consider visiting as well, perhaps in the low season? This approach would require new messages and images in your promotions; the language and pictures that would appeal to a twenty-something will not be as appealing to a 50 year old.
Are there other potential source locations of customers for my services?
Are there source locations with good travel routes to your area from which a new group or market segment of consumers could be drawn? Perhaps the quality and availability of a particular service in your area is well-known locally; could you build this reputation in another source location? Can you find other companies buying corporate wellness services? The travel disruptions during the pandemic offer excellent opportunities to consider alternate sources locations for customers and consumers, especially those who are geographically closer.
CASE STUDY: The Barbados Fertility Centre
The Barbados Fertility Centre is an excellent example of a health organization with a clear audience focus. Barbados is a small eastern Caribbean island well known for decades as a leisure travel destination. Since 2002, the Barbados Fertility Centre has hosted women and men who have had difficulty conceiving. Their clientele has evolved, so that only 15% are Barbadian, 50% are from the Caribbean, and the balance (~35%) are from the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK).
As a Commonwealth country, Barbados Fertility Centre focused on the United Kingdom audience, creating targeted messages for the UK women and couples, emphasizing their excellent fertility results, which are often better than similar clinics in the UK. In addition, because the island is frequented by upper middle-class visitors from the US, the Centre’s audience includes Americans, for whom the price difference, the excellent outcomes, and the beautiful environment combine into a powerful blend of compelling reasons to travel to Barbados.
Points to Remember
- Focus on your audience – who is likely to access and use the services in your location?
- Your audiences include those who are already coming to your destination; who are they?
Does your audience include people as well as businesses?
Download Exercise: Matching Source and Destination Locations
About the Marketing Handbook for Health Tourism
Health tourism and wellness travel markets are in turmoil. The marketing challenges and opportunities for health tourism destinations and providers of health, wellness, dental and medical services have never been greater – or more complicated! Established destinations and providers of health, wellness, dental and medical tourism are looking for ways to remain competitive, and new entrants to these competitive health, wellness and medical travel markets are looking for the path to success. The Marketing Handbook for Health Tourism offers practical, applicable insights for all these audiences.