Medical Tourism in 90% of foreign countries is a new tourism industry that takes medical services, disease care, disease health management, rehabilitation and health recuperation as its themes and tourism as its carrier. It is also the fastest-growing sub-sector of the world tourism industry in recent years. According to a research report jointly released by the Global Spa and Health Summit and the internationally renowned Stanford Research Institute (sri), the global Medical Tourism industry scale was approximately 438.6 billion US dollars in 2013, accounting for about 14% of the overall global tourism industry economy scale.
As an emerging Tourism format, Medical Tourism has long been accepted by the Chinese people. Tourism products such as going to South Korea for plastic surgery and beauty treatments, going to Japan for early cancer screening, and going to Switzerland for anti-aging injections of sheep placenta extract have become the main promoted items for many travel agencies' overseas Tours. Zhou Ye, the marketing manager of a travel agency operating overseas Medical Tourism products in East China, said that anti-aging, cancer prevention physical examinations and plastic surgery and beauty treatments are the most frequently inquired items by outbound tourists.
The number of global Medical Tourism visitors has increased from 20 million in 2006 to 40 million in 2012. More and more countries support Medical Tourism as a high-output tourism project.
However, at present, China's international Medical Tourism industry is still at a "zero starting point" stage. Relevant government departments and Medical institutions have begun to jointly explore replicable models for the development of the international Medical Tourism industry. Moreover, over 90% of the customers of Medical Tourism China mainly travel abroad, and the inbound Medical Tourism industry in China is still in its early infancy. China is already the world's largest exporter of tourists, but in terms of the scale of inbound Medical Tourism industry, it lags significantly behind its Asian neighbors such as South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.