An aggressive marketing strategy in foreign markets, including the high-cost Western countries where healthcare costs are exploding and becoming unmanageable, can help Malaysia benefit greatly from medical tourism, says a German healthcare specialist.   

The expert, who has been noticing Europeans headed for hospitals in Mumbai, Bangalore, Bangkok and elsewhere in Asia, says Malaysia, unlike India and Thailand, was not on the radar of the Western healthcare sector.

This is why Malaysia has not been able to attract a lot of medical traffic, despite its well-developed infrastructure for medical treatment and well-trained doctors.

India, Thailand and, lately, the Philippines are vying for a slice of the medical tourism pie.

Indeed, many patients from North America and Europe are increasingly seeking complex surgical treatment in India and Thailand.

A Frost & Sullivan research study estimates that medical tourism is inherent with a huge business potential that is expected to touch a mind-boggling US$100 billion (RM312 billion) in 2012.

Medical tourism is growing at an annual rate of 20 to 30 percent.  

arab tourist in malaysia 301104 arab women shopping in kl The Middle East is one of the latent source markets of patients, with some 20 percent of healthcare seekers worldwide coming from the Gulf and other Arab countries.

Meanwhile, a report says that Malaysia is one of the countries in the Asia Pacific region whose significance as a source of outbound tourism worldwide increased in 2010.

This assessment is contained in the just-released ITB World Travel Trends Report by Messe Berlin, the agency that organises the world’s biggest tourism fair, ITB Berlin, and its Asian edition ITB ASIA in Singapore.

More people are travelling

Indeed, outbound travel is increasing at double-digit rates and will end this year well ahead of levels reached during the pre-recession peak year 2008, thus setting a new record, according to the report.

The outlook for further growth in 2011 is also looking good, the report maintains.

As the year 2010 draws to a close, a conspicuous attribute of this year’s tourism traffic was the rise in outbound travel from a number of Asian countries.

Besides Malaysia, the other booming outbound Asian markets in 2010 have been China and South Korea which posted 20 percent growth rates. Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and India also posted double-digit growth rates, the report said.

Both China and India have the potential to develop into attractive outbound markets in the years to come. At present, China is the world’s 10th largest outbound market, just behind Japan.  

However, by 2020, the number of outbound Chinese travellers could double while the number of Indians traveling abroad could grow five-fold.

- Bernama