Official figures for 2008 revealing that less than 1,000 medical tourists, rather than the 100,000 plus that the country has regularly claimed, shocked Philippine authorities and hospitals into a rethink. Existing marketing has been all talk, little action and a total failure; so new ideas are needed quickly.
The Philippine Convention & Visitors Corporation (PCVC), a non-profit marketing division within the Department of Tourism, has appointed agency DM9 to develop a campaign to attract medical tourists. This could include road shows, videos for websites and brochures.
Another agency, Campaigns & Grey has a project from Makati Medical Centre, the country’s premier hospital, to market the hospital ahead of its 40th anniversary. The brief includes promoting Makati’s improved facilities and boosting its standing among other medical centres.
The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) is helping develop medical tourism with incentives to health and wellness spas, and hotels; the latter being vital to places like Cebu, as there room shortages. PEZA has so far accredited two hospitals, St. Luke’s in Taguig and Cabrini in Cavite. St. Luke’s at the Fort is a 600-room, 1,000-doctor facility built at a cost of P9 billion and will open in October 2009.
St. Luke’s Medical Centre promotes itself by pointing out that the cost of a heart surgery at $10,000,is just a tenth of the $100,000 in the United States, and a third of what hospitals in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia charge. The problem with cut-price offerings is that medical tourists are wary of prices that appear too low. The country will struggle until individual and national marketing understands why offering ultra-low prices backfires and scares potential customers away, and how other approaches are vital.
The Cebu city government here has given money to the Cebu Health and Wellness Council to help promote Cebu and its local health-and-wellness centres, hospitals and resorts as an international player in medical tourism and wellness. Hospitals, clinics, hotels
and travel operators that are partners of Cebu Health and Wellness will soon launch special packages for tourists where tourists can combine an executive medical check-up with a holiday.
Cebu Doctors University Hospital in January received 60 overseas patients, compared to an average of 10 a month in 2008. The hospital now aims for 100 foreigners a month for the rest of the year. It has rolled out a project to build suite rooms to accommodate foreigners. Most patients are Europeans in need of outpatient procedures, executive checkups, gastrointestinal procedures and heart surgery, not the Americans that everyone talks about. Cebu Doctors has new partnerships with hotels, travel operators and spas. The group sees Cebu as a top destination for spa and wellness, as an adjunct to medical services.
The Medical City has opened a satellite office in Tamuning to ease the paperwork for patients from Guam who want medical treatment at The Medical City.
All these projects are good, but the individual impact is small. What the country needs is for all those officials and politicians who have spent the last four years talking up how much they want medical tourists to come to the country, and making bloated claims on numbers, to spend money on proper marketing campaigns with selected targets, measurable results; combined with ensuring there are sufficient good quality hotels and hospitals to deliver the goods. Also, if the country wants American medical tourists, having just two JCI status hospitals is not enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment