The last 9 months have been a disaster for many businesses around the world but few have been as hard hit as the medical tourism sector. By definition, its raison d'etre is to encourage people to travel abroad for their cosmetic surgery treatments and combine a holiday along with a reduced price operation in some exotic destination. For 9 months the very idea to travel freely, let alone have a vacation have become a fantasy for cosmetic surgery tourists.
But the coronavirus pandemic has hit medical tourism hard. In June, the number of weekly scheduled flights in the U.S. was down by as much as 65% when compared to the same time last year. The recent Covid-19 surges will not help.
As cases begin to rise again in Europe and the U.S., governments are mandating curfews and lockdowns in order to curb infection rates. These lockdowns limit both international and domestic travel. According to AAA, 7 in 10 Americans aren’t sure they’ll be able to take a planned trip by year-end.
Pfizer’s announcement on Monday morning that its Covid-19 vaccine is effective at a rate of more than 90% sent the stock market soaring, and while just an initial step in bringing a vaccine to the public, an effective vaccine could help to restart the stalled medical tourism market. Airlines stocks were among those surging on the news.
We pray that Pfizer's little bottle of dreams can perk up the travel sector for cosmetic surgery tourists as their Viagra brand perked up other important things. Then we could be looking at a vastly changed medical tourism landscape in 2021.
The American Journal of Medicine found that more than 1.4 million Americans sought health care in a different country in 2017. Globally, it estimated that 16 million people traveled to a different country to get care, spending an estimated $45 billion to $72 billion.
These sums are huge for the well-being of developing economies such as Indonesia, Costa Rica, Turkey and India many of whom have invested much in their medical tourism facilities.
The pent up demand for hair transplants in Istanbul and face contouring in Korea is going to be spectacular and will certainly skyrocket our already impressive site traffic. after all, medical tourism is what our site was created for and it has been so frustrating to be hobbled by COVID for our debut year. I sense happy days are coming fairly soon.
Admin is Blogger David Miller FRSA. M.Sc A respected British journalist based in Helsinki Finland. David's portfolio is at http://livewire.pressfolios.com/ David is contactable via the site or at david@dmiller.co.uk
