Medical Tourism from Mainland China: New Perspectives for Tour Guides in Taiwan

The world population is aging and the availability of quality healthcare resources can be found beyond national borders. International healthcare options are pursuing by medical travelers. The worldwide medical tourism market is growing rapidly. Visitor arrivals in Taiwan from the whole world exceeded six million in 2011. The top departure district was mainland China with 1.78 million visitor arrivals. Taiwan was ranked as the eighth healthcare destination among the top 10 destinations. This paper indicates part of a series of research works to promote medical travelers from mainland China taking Taiwan as one of their favor destinations. The objective of this paper was to promote medical tourism among medical travelers from mainland China by taking tour guides as the key component in medical tourism market promotion. The target population is a group of certified professional tour guides in Taiwan, who may be or may be not involving in medical tourism at this stage. New perspectives for tour guides in Taiwan were pursued by semi-structured interviews. The scope of interviews only confined to healthcare marketing, and what are tour guides' intensions and demands. The obtained results indicated that nine issues are critical and important. They consist of education systems for market promotion, certification systems, intensified medical tourism courses in the official tour guide trainings, outstanding healthcare centers as guide posts, affordable charges for medical travelers, tourist classification for medical travelers, sustained reputation for specialty excellence in healthcare, adequate itinerary, and marketing strategy for medical tourism in Taiwan.