Medical Tourism Struggles to Recover as Travelers Spend Cautiously

25.08.2023 - 14:04 / skift.com

Attila Knott has an empty dental hospital in Hungary.

The foreigners with bad teeth he was counting on never arrived, deterred first by Covid-19 and now by a cost-of-living crisis that has left the medical tourism industry struggling to recover even after the lifting of pandemic travel restrictions.

“People are more cautious,” Knott told Reuters, staring at the empty building across the street from his existing Kreativ Dental clinic. “They think twice about spending big money all at once on something like dental treatment.”

The businessman had aimed to open the new facility in March 2020 to serve more patients seeking procedures in Hungary for a cheaper price than at home.

Now, with patient numbers having halved from around 600 a month before Covid struck, he is thinking of branching out into colonoscopies and knee replacements.

For years, travelling abroad to clinics in countries like Hungary and Turkey has been an option for British and North American patients who face long waits, high costs or both for dental and medical procedures at home.

Operators had hoped for a rapid bounce back after curbs on travel were lifted.

But inflation fuelled by soaring energy and food prices since the Ukraine war started a year ago has left people with little money to spare, especially for cosmetic procedures.

In Hungary, which borders Ukraine, the war itself is making foreigners wary, Knott said.

Rising air fares and fewer flights — and the memory of last summer’s travel chaos — are also putting off would-be patients, clinic operators and analysts told Reuters.

For some trips, like those to Turkey, airline tickets can be twice what they were in 2019, according to WeCure, which specialises in medical tourism to large hubs like Turkey from countries like Britain.

WeCure said flights, ground transfers and petrol now accounted for about 15 percent of the cost of its travel and treatment packages, roughly double their proportion pre-Covid, putting upward pressure on overall prices.

Some clinics, facing their own higher costs, have hiked charges. A hip or knee replacement at Nordorthopaedics in Lithuania is about 15 percent more expensive now than five years ago, the clinic told Reuters.

“There will be some trade-offs (for customers),” WeCure’s CEO Emre Atceken said. “Instead of having a hair transplant. I’d rather pay my gas bills. I would rather pay my electric bills,”

To encourage clients, some clinic operators are offering pay-as-you-go options, while crowdfunding has sprung up as another source of support.

Atceken said WeCure is offering some customers payment in instalments to stretch out the cost.

Lyfboat, an Indian company providing medical services for foreign patients, told Reuters it has collaborated with a