Medical tourism is the latest trend that has taken over the private sector
healthcare in India. Plush rooms that give you feel of a five star hotels,
Rolls-Royce to travel in, food court, in house cinema lounge…they have all that one can imagine and ask for.
It is healthcare firms like
Fortis Healthcare Ltd,
Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd and
Medanta that have either constructed or advanced the facilities to provide its consumers with the high-end services. And
ASSOCHAM believes, this business could grow as much as 20% a year and have the potential to become a $125 billion market in another two years. Strong demand of quality medical services has given a boom to the market and overseas competitors including Dubai-based
Aster DM Healthcare and
ABV Group too are investing aggressively in India.
"The fact that you actually come for surgery or medical treatment would be an incidental part of the experience," ABV Group Chief Executive Advet Bhambhani told Reuters.
ABV, one of the biggest performers is planning to invest $78 million to smarten up the hotels and to provide Rolls-Royce to the patients. Not just this, but there are special packages in which you can include site-seeing along with the surgical treatments.
Coming back to the Delhi based
Fortis Memorial Hospital, which is equipped with an in-house cinema lounge and food court and is promising to provide top-notch services to its consumers. On the other hand we have Kerala based Aster Medcity, a 575-bed hospital which have warm lighting and hardwood floors that gives the patients feel of a luxury hotel room.
The medical tourism sector is expected to grow to $10.3 billion in 2020, from $2.8 billion now, consultancy PwC says. A 2014 study by consultants KPMG ranks India as the third top Asian destination for medical tourists after Thailand and Singapore, with 25% growth a year, outstripping the 16% growth in Thailand, said the report published in ET.
Image: thinkstock
