Tourists experience medical tourism products in Ho Chi Minh City
In Vietnam, with the advantage of being the vibrant economic , social and cultural center of the country, Ho Chi Minh City has great potential to build and develop medical tourism products on par with the region. According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, with the development of high-tech applications, in-depth examination and treatment, especially the creativity in building tour programs combining health examination, treatment with sightseeing in Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring localities... are diverse materials for Ho Chi Minh City to strive to build medical tourism into a truly potential tourism product and aim to bring a regional brand by 2030.
A representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism said that in 2023, Ho Chi Minh City announced nearly 50 tourism products with 20 new, attractive and unique tourism products for many segments of middle-class and high-end tourists. In particular, the medical tourism sector has recorded a boom with the announcement of 30 combo tour programs combining medical tourism and health care suitable for domestic and international tourist markets. The medical tourism handbook has also been updated, supplemented and adjusted in 6 languages with concise and clear content for tourists to easily understand and access. Notably, the promotion and advertising of medical tourism products to attract tourists in the Cambodian market and the survey and learning from experiences in developing medical tourism models in Thailand.
For Ho Chi Minh City, developing and enhancing the tourism brand for the most vibrant economic center of the country is not only in line with the general development trend of world tourism, but also contributes to diversifying products, meeting the increasingly diverse needs of tourists, increasing the attractiveness of Ho Chi Minh City destinations to promote the growth of domestic and international tourists. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, medical tourism brought in about 2 billion USD in revenue for the city's tourism industry each year.
Ms. Bui Thi Ngoc Hieu, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, shared that the City's medical tourism products still have many concerns and difficulties and some shortcomings that need to be improved, such as the lack of human resources fluent in medical languages, unprofessional medical tourism product promotion, most hospitals in the City do not have international certificates for foreign patients to use global insurance, and there is no close connection between medical facilities, travel agencies, and hotels to form a complete product chain.
Dr. Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, said that the city's health sector development orientation has proposed 7 groups of solutions to soon turn Ho Chi Minh City into a health care center of the ASEAN region. These include solutions to develop modern medicine and traditional medicine to meet the development of medical tourism, focusing on building and providing quality services to meet the diverse needs of health care tourism. In the long term, Ho Chi Minh City is developing a project to develop medical tourism until 2023, with a vision to 2045.
Mr. Nguyen Minh Man, Director of Communications - Marketing of TSTtourist Company, acknowledged that in the context of strong international competition, many countries in the region such as Thailand, Singapore... besides developing traditional tourism, they have promoted campaigns to attract tourists through health tourism, medical tourism... becoming one of the typical tourism products, attracting a large number of tourists with good financial capacity, including Vietnamese tourists.
According to Mr. Man, in order to exploit the advantages and gradually develop medical tourism into a unique tourism product in the near future, the Ho Chi Minh City tourism industry and travel businesses, public and non-public medical facilities need to promote substantial links in assessing customer needs, limiting existing problems and proposing feasible solutions, both creating a separate direction suitable for the demand trends of the region and the world, and focusing on developing infrastructure and supporting facilities corresponding to the scale of development, focusing on training high-quality human resources, including foreign languages to improve customer support capabilities. In addition, focus on training specialized knowledge for tourism staff, increase regular promotion to build the image of the City's medical tourism brand.
A representative of Vietravel Tourism Company shared that Vietnam has great potential in developing medical tourism, however, the exploitation of this type has not been really effective, most tourism businesses have only focused on the most accessible areas, which are improving the mental health of tourists through exercise therapy or massage, relaxation close to nature... More specialized types have not yet been accessible. Therefore, it is necessary to promote communication about the superiority of the domestic medical industry, ensure convenience in accessing medical tourism products; diversify products from mental healing, non-invasive beauty to cosmetic surgery, dentistry, musculoskeletal examination and treatment... Especially, bringing Asian healing therapy closer to international tourists to create trust for tourists.
HOANG HAI
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