Lessons from Thai International Medical Tourism: Its Market Analysis, Barriers and Solutions

Lessons from Thai International Medical Tourism: Its Market Analysis, Barriers and Solutions

Since the Thai government established a 5-year medical tourism promotion plan in 2004, Thailand has become a global leading country as a international medical tourism hub. Thus, this study attempted to assess Thailand’s medical tourism market, which is the largest in the world in terms of the number of foreign medical tourists and revenues. Strengths include strong government support, effective marketing policies, and high quality hospitals and infrastructure. Opportunities are globally increasing senior population, quick medical treatments, and development of digital technologies. However, weaknesses are found as having not cooperative teamwork between public and private medical sectors, language barrier, distrust on medical facilities or services, no regular quality assessment program for hospitals, and existence of only a few internationally well-known Thai hospitals. Thailand is also committed to threats such as uncontrollable global factors, intense competition in an Asian medical tourism market. Pursuant to attract more foreign medical tourists to Korea, this study suggests potentials of benchmarking Thai medical tourism market.