Understanding Your Health & Wellness Tourism Market Potential

Medical tourism destination development starts with a situation analysis to understand the destination's market potential.  

Situation analysis requires the skills and experience that comes from decades of hands-on involvement and work history. We've been in the business of medical tourism since 1983 working as a medical tourism business development consultancy. Clients engage our experts to complete medical tourism business development assignments, market research, market sizing, market penetration strategies, and assist startups and process improvement in more than 120 countries. 

Anyone can grab a clipboard, make an outline or even copy our checklist below and ask a bunch of questions

The magic comes not in the data gathering. That's easy and straightfoward. Anyone with a high school education can gather data. The magic comes in what to do with the data gathered to turn it into something useful and prescriptive.  We gather the data, process it and show you why you should act on it. And then we show you how. We add even more value when we guide on what not to pursue and explain why not and how you might better use your startup and existing resources for better results.

Hire the experts that bring you the experience you need for the task at hand.

When it comes to medical tourism business development expertise and experience, you have choices

The industry is filled with amateurs, marketing generalists who have recently discovered medical tourism, trade association conference organizers, and medical tourism destination directory publishers who dabble in consulting from time-to-time and in every price range.

Choose an experienced medical tourism analyst who knows what data to gather and can explain why it is important. Choose a health tourism expert that is willing and able to answer your specific questions -- instead of their standard cheer-leader analysis and template reports that recommend conference stand rentals, sponsorships and certifications consumers won't recognize or understand.

Our experts uncover and analyze bits of information that you may not realize are significant. We bring the training and experience to interpret the data and convert it to useful information. The resulting output is a detailed report that describes the data we gathered, its interpretation, and how the data should be used to inform your unique market entry strategy and marketing tactics to deploy a successful health or wellness tourism program at your destination. We work with medical tourism hospitals, clinics, hotels, resorts, rehab centers, spas, doctors, dentists, governments, investors, and destination developers across the USA and abroad.

Choose the services and market research you believe is important - to you

How we analyze your medical tourism market potential

Destination

  • Your Premier Medical Services: Medical Tourism
  • Your Premier Medical Services: Dental Tourism
  • Your Premier Medical Services: Rehab Tourism
  • Your Premier Medical Services: Dialysis Tourism
  • Your Premier Medical Services: Wellness Tourism
  • Your Unique Offers and Capabilities
  • Focus on Differentiation and Value for Money

Medical Tourism: Market Dynamics

Market Drivers
 
  • Rapid access to general medical and dental care
  • Access to celebrity specialists of world renown
  • Access to private healthcare centers of excellence
  • Access to academic medical centers
  • Anonymity and privacy
  • Access to specialized services 
  • Access to clinical trials and investigational procedures and treatments
  • Access to procedures not available in home country
  • Price arbitrage
  • Opportunities to unplug, recharge, relax and rejuvenate
Access to Care
  • Waiting Times
  • Travel itinerary complexity (coordination through hub airports and/or non-stop source market airports)
  • Travel duration
  • Aircraft used on most popular routes
  • Distance from airports / rail stations, cost of transfers, difficulty of transfer arrangements, vehicle appropriateness

Affordability

  • Average Cost of Affordable Health and Wellness Procedures
     
  • Comparative Cost of Medical Procedures (Closest Competitors)
  • Comparison of overall Episode of Care cost (pre-departure diagnostics, travel and tourism and post-return care included)

Access to Technology

  • Technology and Treatment Options
  • Established standard of care and investigative procedures and clinical trials

Destination Attractiveness

  • Tourism or vacation offerings and pairings
  • Respite care
  • Hotel and guest accommodation readiness
  • Dialysis availability and costs
  • Selection of appropriate accommodation proximate to care settings
  • Activation of relevant local activities and attractions
  • Perceived safety and security image and threats
  • Long-stay & 2nd residence program
  • Urban and regional development readiness
  • Customer persona development
  • One-of-a-kind experiences

Examination of Market Constraints 

  • Language and cultural preparedness of medical and nursing staff
  • Telehealth availability for pre-/post-care
  • Medical malpractice and liability
  • Country’s perceived image by foreign patients
  • Travel time, distance, and cost
  • Access to airport and international hubs
  • Airport ground and support services
  • Aircraft frequently used to fly there
  • Travel distance and cost indices
  • Untapped near market opportunities
  • Specific source market strategies
  • Undeveloped domestic medical tourism opportunities
  • Lack of government support and sector funding
  • ICT communication constraints

Government Sector Support

  • Education & Training
  • Taxation & FDI
  • Promotion Budget and Objectives
  • Urban & Regional Planning
  • Health Facilities Commissioning
  • National Accreditation Standards
  • Healthcare Advertising and Marketing Laws
  • Stakeholder Collaboration
  • Celebrity Influencer Strategies
  • Medical Tourism Legislative Framework Creation
  • National Health Tourism Strategy Definition

Competitive Analysis

We determine:

  • Which services to promote 
  • Which campaign messages to use
  • How to connect with prospects across multiple channels
  • How to connect with referral agents and influencers
  • Why your destination or supplier over all others
  • Your most promising niche(s) 
  • Your best tactics for quick wins and quick revenues
  • Your readiness to contract with insurers, employers, unions, associations, and governments

We analyze: 

  • Bargaining power of buyers
  • Positioning and market power of suppliers
  • Threats by new entrants
  • Threats by substitutes (fungibility)
  • Specific competitive rivalries 

The advantage we bring to client projects includes:

  • We save you money - our international medical, dental, rehab and dialysis tourism market data and insights 
  • We complete the work sooner - we've already examined many of your closest competitors and can report SWOT about them without another field research trip
  • We know what buyers want - we bring both consumer and group health (government, insurer, employer, labor unions, and associations) buyer insights
  • We know hospital management - we understand hospital management, operations, revenue cycle, insurance contracting, and accreditation
  • We know hotel management - front of the house, back of the house, operations, concierge, services for special needs travelers, safety, security, guest technology and more
  • We know travel management - agency operations, air travel reservations, special services coordination, ground handling, ticketing, travel insurance and more
  • We know insurance contracting - we help hospitals and clinics get contracts with insurance companies, employers labor, unions, government programs, and more
  • We know medicine and dentistry - we know quality and safety risks and best practices because our experts bring years of previous hands on clinical work experience
  • We know telehealth - no health tourism program can survive without integrated telehealth services for both pre-arrival and post-departure continuity of care management and treatment
  • We know medical records - we understand healthcare privacy, security and medical documentation requirements around the world
  • We know software - our experts helped design and develop the world's first and only health tourism industry software for hospitals, facilitators, resorts, and medical tourism destination clusters
  • We know branding - we conduct branding audits that enable us to help you determine your most promising target source markets, your competitive advantage, your image, and your message
  • We know programming - we use the information from the branding audit to help you design your medical, dental, rehab or wellness tourism user experience (product)
  • We know marketing - we use the information from the branding audit and your unique product and programming to design a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote your services
  • We know consumer behavior - we know why people choose medical tourism suppliers, what's important to them and how to connect and communicate with them
  • We know operations - we bring hands-on experience with every step of the operations and workflow process for medical tourism coordination services - we can show you how to do everything
  • We know accreditation - we don't just tell you to seek accreditation; our team experts can help you to prepare and pass your accreditation survey
  • We know clinical trials - we can help recruit qualified subjects for medical investigation studies
  • We can execute - We handle marketing, branding advertising, website, translation, public relations, or media relations campaign and all creative work for your project

After the Analysis: How We Can Help:

Business-to-business (B2B) introductions to:

  • insurers interested to learn more about your destination and services
  • health benefits professionals brokers and agents
  • group health buyers from employer and union medical and dental benefit plans, associations and co-ops
  • government health ministries with a duty of care who must augment local services
  • technology partners ready to help you improve operations and expand services
  • media partners and travel writers interested to promote your destination offers
  • established and successful medical tourism referral agencies ready to consider your offer for their clients
  • collaborating health facilities seeking "sister hospital" and "sister clinic" programs
  • pharma and technology researchers seeking clinical research investigation collaborators
  • tourism security experts who can tighten up and mitigate visitor risk exposures
  • disaster preparedness experts who can guide policy and procedure development for your program
  • doctors and dentists who would like to obtain licensure and privileges to bring their own patients and perform surgery at your location
  • doctors and dentists from leading academic medical centers willing to teach and share skills through knowledge transfer
  • investors who are interested to know more about medical, dental and tourism investment opportunities to your location

Want to discuss how our team might help you with your medical tourism business development? Get in touch today.