Thailand To Focus on Well-off Chinese Medical Tourists
Thailand To Focus on Well-off Chinese Medical Tourists
Statistics indicate that the amount of Chinese tourists that go to Thailand as part of a medical tourism trip together with the number of affluent business people who are willing to spend a fortune on medical visits is impressive. Last year, more than 480,000 visitors arrived from China for medical tourism reasons.
These visitors spent over 6 Billion USD on medical treatments and over 3 Billion USD on accommodation and travel, turning the medical tourism industry into a business worth as much as 9.5 Billion USD.
Figures are constantly going up and have been doing so for some time, with an estimated increase in the volume of visitors by 31% on a yearly basis since 2012.
This increase is expected to continue, with Chinese medical visitors projected to increase to more than 800,000 by 2020.
2015 saw China at the top of the Billionaires’ ranking with more than 560 Billionaires, set side by side with 535 from the USA that had about 90 more this year.
If you combine the net financial value of 1.4 Trillion of Billionaires in China, you will find a similarity to the Australian gross domestic product. Diana Chou, founder and executive of the private jet company L’VOYAGE with its base in Hong Kong, made reference to those numbers in order to focus attention on the Chinese medical tourism and holiday visitors.
There are a lot of actions that Thailand can take to grab this once-in-a-lifetime- chance offered by this new yet well-off segment of the market.
In an interview, Diana Chou said there are many luxurious aviation chances that are not used. The most important chance is the creation of high-end medical tourism trips by plane. Another chance Thailand has, is to make use of helicopters for tourism purposes with only 10% of Thailand’s planes used to visit historical landmarks.
Chinese know how to treat tourists because they make use of their resources to pamper visitors. For example, if you want to see the Great Wall, Guilin caves and or other famous landmarks, you can visit these by helicopter.
If the appropriate advertising campaign aims at attracting Chinese travellers, Thailand will have a lot more chance to arrange and offer more luxurious medical trips for well-off tourists. The key lies in doing better than Singapore and Malaysia.
Diana Chou mentioned that Singapore has a clear advantage over Thailand by virtue of its Mandarin-speaking medical staff, which is a way of making entrepreneurs and tycoons feel as if they were in their home country.
It’s not possible to say that Malaysia and Singapore are working harder than Thailand when it comes to the promotion of medical tourism, but Chinese tourists are more familiar with destinations like Malaysia and Singapore.
She placed emphasis on how necessary it is for Thailand to satisfy Chinese customers, especially training people to speak Mandarin. This would make Chinese tourists feel pleased and pampered.
Keywords/phrases – Medical Tourism, Thailand, Chinese, Singapore, Diana Chow.
