Medical Tourism Growing at Annual Growth Rate of About 20% Per Year

Medical tourism should be seen as the ‘healing treatment’ segment of the overall health tourism market, while fitness and wellness holidays should be seen as the ‘prevention’ segment, Professor Helmut Wachowiak, of the International University of Applied Sciences Bad Honnef (IUBH), near Bonn, Germany, said at the Pisa forum.
 
Although reliable facts and figures about the market are rare, the latest estimates put the worldwide medical tourism market at anywhere between $40 billion and $60 billion in 2012, and with annual growth rates of about 20% a year, he said.

One survey last year estimated that 3-4% of the world population already travels to foreign countries for medical treatment while the pent-up demand could be much larger with as many as 53% of Europeans saying they would travel abroad for treatment.

According to IPK’s World Travel Monitor, health and medical travel accounted for a total of 9.4 million trips in 2011, or 2.4% of all European outbound travel. Over the past five years, health vacations by Europeans have increased by 38% while medical tourism has gone up by 24%, the IPK research found.

A representative survey by the IUBH last year found that 52% of German adults could imagine travelling abroad for medical treatment, including dental treatment and surgery, mostly due to lower costs abroad or for treatment that is not available in Germany.