RP wins bid to host World Health Tourism Congress

The Philippines has won the bid to host the 2009 World Health Tourism Congress (WHTC), making the country the first in the Asia-Pacific to serve as venue for this prestigious global event.

Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano said this development marked the country’s serious effort to be positioned as a global health and wellness destination.

“The 2009 WHTC, which will be held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila on March 26 to 28, 2009, will bring hundreds of leading health and wellness tourism players — both buyers and sellers — from all over the world,” Durano said.

“Yet, this 2009 WHTC will just be the fourth since its initial staging in Germany in 2006, and we have won the privilege to host it after some fervent negotiations,” he added.

After Germany, Cyprus hosted the second WHTC on March 23-25, 2007 and Spain the third last April 4-6.

The WHTC gathers the world’s health and wellness service providers and corporate and institutional buyers for a three-day conference, workshop and one-on-one business sessions, enabling both parties to forge supply contracts, establish market linkages, form partnerships, and engage in various mutually beneficial transactions.

“Thus, our country’s participating health and wellness industry players will have the opportunity to meet the world’s best qualified corporate and institutional buyers in an exclusive business environment where only those who are invited can attend. As such, they will have the undivided attention of their potential customers,” Durano said.

The country won the bid to host the 2009 WHTC partly because of an emerging trend in the Arab world to move to Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, according to managing partner Hadi Malaeb of Aura International Dubai, the congress organizer.

Malaeb told a recent press conference that 92,000 medical tourists from the United Arab Emirates alone came to the Philippines last year compared to only 60,000 to Thailand.

Citing a 2006 Globalysis study, Malaeb placed the value of the world’s health and wellness tourism industry at $40 billion. 

“And this is projected to soar to $60 billion in 2012, indicating that health and wellness is the fastest growing segment of the tourism industry,” Malaeb said.

The Asian market alone, according to Malaeb, consists of 1.5-million medical tourists spending a daily average of $362 compared with the $144 of regular inbound visitors.

Thus, the WHTC is strongly focused on sports medicine, wellness, medical and cosmetic treatments such that the participating solution providers to be invited are hotels, spas and health resorts, airlines and air ambulance companies, medical services agents, inbound tour operators specializing in health tourism, and general and specialist hospitals and clinics, especially those engaged in cosmetic dentistry, plastic surgery, and orthopedic and sports medicine, according to the Department of Tourism (DOT).

“Their services will be matched with the needs of corporate buyers who have been pre-qualified as the ultimate decision-makers in their respective organizations for matters on well-being and medical travel,” said DOT Undersecretary for Sports and Wellness Tourism Cynthia Carrion.

“These corporate buyers are looking for solution providers who can understand and provide their specific needs. During the WHTC’s three-day run, they can decide on which sets of services they need and which solution providers to tap for their full-year requirements,” Carrion added.

The corporate buyers, according to travel industry leader Angel Ramos-Bognot, are health officials of various countries, particularly from the Arab world, who are the biggest spenders in medical travel; insurance companies whose network managers decide where to send their clients; third-party medical agents, mostly from North America and Western Europe, who combine travel arrangement with medical treatment for their clientele; and outbound tour operators looking for health and wellness destinations for clients back home.

“The 2009 WHTC will bring this large global market within the reach of our health and wellness industry, and our success in gaining the privilege to host it early next year clearly indicates that our campaign to establish a niche in this field is gaining ground,” Durano said.