Cebu delegation off to Canada to promote wellness packages

CEBU, Philippines – An eleven-member delegation from the Cebu Health and Wellness Council Inc. (CHWC) is now in Canada to promote Cebu’s health and wellness packages, primarily to Filipinos residing and working there.

This is the first of a series of international trade mission led by Dra. Clarissa Pe in order to tap the huge “balikbayan” market, making them the ambassadors to promote Cebu as the premier health and wellness destination in Asia.

The group, who left early this week, is set to join the Cebu Health and Wellness Expo 2010 in Toronto, Canada.

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Cebu provincial office director Nelia F. Navarro said the expo aims to attract medical tourists from North America by making them aware of Cebu’s world-class medical and wellness services.

The Expo scheduled on July 23 to 25 will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

Navarro said Cebu is the only tourism destination being featured in this Medical Tourism and Exhibition, which also coincides with the Mabuhay Festival in Toronto.

The Mabuhay Festival is one of the premier festivals in Toronto and is the largest celebration of Philippine heritage, arts and culture in Canada. This trade show festival attracts more than 15,000 attendees from the fourth largest ethnic group in Ontario with more than 250 thousand Filipinos in the greater Toronto area.

The three-day event will showcase various high-impact visual and marketing activities such as building relationships with the medical community in Toronto, Filipino-Canadian resellers, and selling and cross-selling alliances, face-to-face encounter with consumers and the mission hopes to achieve direct selling objectives, generate contact and leads, and gain media mileage for Cebu.

CHWC is a private sector-led coalition of industry stakeholders that promotes health and wellness tourism in Cebu.

The group is represented by champions from different sub-sectors in the broad health and wellness industry, such as hospital/medical services, dental services, Day Spas, Resort Spas, hospitality, and travel and tours.

Canada is considered as one of the most lucrative markets for health and wellness considering the presence of Filipinos there, and significantly Canada is also relatively unscathed from the global economic downturn.

Also Cebu’s major hospitals are already internationally-accredited and can accept health insurance from North America and Europe.

The Chong Hua Hospital (CHH) for instance recently got the accreditation from the Joint Commission International (JCI), a body that accredits hospitals and health care providers outside the United States that have international standard services

The Philippines estimated to have treated 100,000 foreign patients in 2007 generating US$400 million. The government projects the revenues to hit US$2 billion by 2012. (THE FREEMAN)