Tourism has become one of the largest industries of the world as the national and international tourists are growing continuously. In the recent decades the reasons of visiting places haveincreased a lot. This is due to the fact, people are preferring to visit places with natural attraction, historical interests, events and for wellness and medical purposes. However, this report will particularly focus on the medical tourism segment of the Australian hospitality market (Ormond and Sulianti 2017). This report will discuss few factors to understand the situation of the medical tourism market through analyzing the touch points of the potential travelers, some issues emerging in this touch points and solution to solve these emerging issues in the marketing of medical tourism.
Medical tourism aims to offer services basically to the tourists who decide to travel domestically or internationallyto receive some king of medical treatment. It can be treatments for surgery, dental and cancer treatment, periodicalmedical tests and infertility treatment (Izadi et al. 2014). The most important factor of marketing in this facet of tourism is its applicability. Most of the tourists who avail this type oftourism either do not get proper treatment in their home cities or they find it too expensive (Bélandand Zarzeczny2018). This is the reason why this sector of tourism hasflourished greatly in Australia. There are five stages of travelers’touch point which most of the stakeholders of tourism industry want to grab. These are dreaming, planning, booking, experiencing and sharing.
Figure 1. Dreaming to travel
(Source: Black 2018)
In the field of medical tourism, the dreaming process of the tourists are associated with the feeling the urge of getting proper treatment in the other cities or getting treatmentwith relatively lower expenses from their home cities (Bochaton 2015). The marketers therefore follow up the patientswho require such type of services ad avail this tour.
Figure 2. Planning to travel
(Source: Black 2018)
The planning factor is associated with the analysis of the available resources to reach the decidedplace for treatment. For this reason, these visitorsconductresearches in the internet or get referred by their friends or relatives then choose a particular place for getting treatment according to their financial capabilities.
Figure 3. Booking to travel
(Source: Black 2018)
After planning the third stage is booking (Buhalisand Amaranggana2015). The travelers of the medical tourism try to find the most convincing website to any other means of booking so that they can stay at the place with least expense and carry on the treatment process without any financial problems.
Figure 4. Experiencing to travel
(Source: Black 2018)
The fourth stage of traveling touch point is experiencing in which the clients actually enjoy their holiday or treatment. After reaching the place the medical traveler obviously searches for most comfortable hotels where they can have the most reliable staff and care for their illness (Gretzel et al., 2015). Therefore the hospitality industry of that place takes care of their clients at their best possible manner and makes the holiday successful.
Figure 5. Sharing the experience travel
(Source: Black 2018)
In today’s world, the tourists prefer to share their photos, videos and other information about their trips in the social media. After the customers experience their trip they share their views about the place or how successful their trips were with others. These happy customers are actually the sources whom the hospitality industry of Australia can utilize to create a customer base as these refer to other about the place, treatment and hospitality.
Figure 6. Medical Tourism Index
(Source: Healthcareresearchcenter.org 2018)
These touchpoints get affected by various types of issues which dissuade the travelers to avoid travelling for medical treatments.These reasons are economic impact and leakage from tourism, impact of globalization, customer perceptions, ethical considerations, family caregivers, human trafficking, taxation, organ transplants, terrorism, social issues, problems of accommodation, fails of promotion and high competition among the countries to attract international tourists (Han and Hyun2015).In this regard, the airlines cannot perform according to the demand of the customers freely as different countries have different policies and laws which manipulate the perspectives of the customers (Hanefeld, Smith and Noree2016).
Therefore, the government’s policies of investing money in their tourism sector often shows the promotion of the place through various methods. These countries have potentials to build a tourism sector only attracting the medical patients, have encouraged their hospitality sector to construct and mandate proper accommodation of the tourists or offering all the technological facilities so that these tourists can contact with the medical tourism of this place (Fetscherin and Stephano 2016). In addition to these, another most important factor that can affect the medical tourism of a place it is social or political upheavals (Suki et al. 2015). In order to reduce these problems the hospitality sector of Australia has built associations so that or political instability can be mitigated and they attract international tourists through much promotion they do (Suess, Balogluand Busser 2018). Proper infrastructure and transportation systems are being built so that these international tourists do not face issues anymore (Adams et al.2018). The government is providing benefits to the medical organizations along with the hotels so that all the stages of travelers’ touch points can be catered and the tourists share their positive responses with others. This will effectively grow medical tourism in Australia.
Conclusion:
Therefore, it can be concluded that the medical tourism is one of the most important part of whole tourism sector of a country. This is due to the fact that the health awareness among the people is increasing and they prefer to visit the places where they can get more affordable health care treatment and facilities in less expense. However, there are steps how people plan and visit these places where the organizations related to tourism are finding issues. Therefore, they need to follow some methods to overcome such problems and promote the medical tourism of that place efficiently.
References:
Adams, K., Snyder, J., Crooks, V.A. and Berry, N.S., 2018. A critical examination of empowerment discourse in medical tourism: the case of the dental tourism industry in Los Algodones, Mexico. Globalization and health, 14(1), p.70.
Béland, D. and Zarzeczny, A., 2018. Medical tourism and national health care systems: an institutionalist research agenda. Globalization and health, 14(1), p.68.
Black, N. (2018). The Five Stages of Travel. [online] Nickblack.org. Available at: https://www.nickblack.org/2011/12/five-stages-of-travel.html [Accessed 15 Aug. 2018].
Bochaton, A., 2015. Cross-border mobility and social networks: Laotians seeking medical treatment along the Thai border. Social Science & Medicine, 124, pp.364-373.
Buhalis, D. and Amaranggana, A., 2015. Smart tourism destinations enhancing tourism experience through personalisation of services. In Information and communication technologies in tourism 2015 (pp. 377-389). Springer, Cham.
Gretzel, U., Werthner, H., Koo, C. and Lamsfus, C., 2015. Conceptual foundations for understanding smart tourism ecosystems. Computers in Human Behavior, 50, pp.558-563.
Han, H. and Hyun, S.S., 2015. Customer retention in the medical tourism industry: Impact of quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness. Tourism Management, 46, pp.20-29.
Hanefeld, J., Smith, R. and Noree, T., 2016. Medical tourism. In World Scientific Handbook of Global Health Economics and Public Policy: Volume 3: Health System Characteristics and Performance (pp. 333-350).
Fetscherin, M. and Stephano, R.M., 2016. The medical tourism index: Scale development and validation. Tourism Management, 52, pp.539-556.
Healthcareresearchcenter.org 2018. Medical Tourism Index. [online] Healthcareresearchcenter.org. Available at: https://www.healthcareresearchcenter.org/medical-tourism-index/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2018].
Izadi, M., Saadat, S.H., Ayoubian, A., Dehaghi, Z.H., Karbasi, M.R. and Jalali, A.R., 2014. Health tourism in Iran; identifying obstacles for development of this industry. International Journal of Travel Medicine and Global Health, 1(2), pp.89-94.
Ormond, M. and Sulianti, D., 2017. More than medical tourism: lessons from Indonesia and Malaysia on South–South intra-regional medical travel. Current Issues in Tourism, 20(1), pp.94-110.
Suess, C., Baloglu, S. and Busser, J.A., 2018. Perceived impacts of medical tourism development on community wellbeing. Tourism Management, 69, pp.232-245.
Suki, A.A., Putit, L., Yusof, J.M. and Khan, N.R., 2015. Assessing medical tourists’ destination choice behavior: A conceptual perspective. In 2nd International Hospitality and Tourism Conference 2014. CRC Press/Balkema.
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