Recently, Dubai has put a lot of efforts into making the city the hub of the world’s medical tourism. The current influx of medical tourists goes to show that the efforts were made not in vain and that the return on investment in the facilities can be expected earlier than expected.
The 2020’s objective is around half a million medical tourists per year, which is achievable considering the current number of incoming tourists per year. This will amount to 0.33% of the GDP and represent a substantial increase from the current 0.26%.
The current figures show that over 120000 people from UAE and abroad were treated in Dubai. These figures do not represent by far the whole medical scope of Dubai, as there are more than 1400 medical clinics in Dubai and the above data reflects only 16 hospitals out of 1400 medical treatment institutions. Those hospitals alone have raked in more than 700 million dirhams in revenue. This figure is said to double if counting all other medical institutions.
Until 2020, Dubai’s medical tourists’ number is expected to grow 12% year on year and the total revenue by 2020 is expected to reach 2.6 billion dirhams.
The packages for medical tourists are quite attractive and include hotel stay and flight tickets as well reduced prices for certain services for residents of UAE. The main treatments include orthopedics, cosmetic surgery and infertility treatments.
Currently, the proverbial Dubai Health Care City comprising more than 130 medical centers and employing more than 5000 professionals is expanding and will stretch to more than 1 million m2.
Current estimate shows that medical tourists coming to Dubai can choose from over 40,000 healthcare professionals spread among 4,000 medical institutions. Soon, a new online system will be introduced in UAE, through which all tourists from all over the world will be able to register for a medical treatment, therefore the numbers of healthcare tourists will substantially increase by 2020.
Salamatak is one of those providers which will connect healthcare tourists from abroad with all the medical institutions in UAE, thus, substantially reducing time to find a suitable doctor or treatment which usually would have taken a month or longer. Additionally, medical tourists can now avail the professional multi-lingual staff.
Currently, the medical tourism is very popular among many countries, particularly Russia, India and Africa. Overall, the medical tourism in UAE has generated over one billion.
