Health Travel ABC by Visit Finland

Visit Finland, the national tourism organization of Finland has launched a manual Health Travel ABC that aims to serve as a guideline to Finnish service providers who intend to make a firm step in the international health travel market. Finland has a clear focus on health travel services offered and its target markets, and a strong value proposition: “to provide fast access to high-quality care in a safe environment with an excellent quality-price ratio”. Since a few years, Visit Finland has been driving the promotional activities and backing up all efforts of Finnish health travel and tourism stakeholders in accessing the international market, while also supporting the hard work carried out by the Medical Tourism Association Finland.

Visit Finland engaged the HTI to create the manual and carry out other educational and promotional activities as part of the project managed by the HTI Managing Director Leila Krešić-Jurić, that gathered a network of international medical travel professionals. At the occasion of the manual launch, Visit Finland and HTI offered a webinar on the core manual topics. It encompassed successful medical destinations and their best practices, the role of medical tourism facilitators, emerging opportunities in the sector, and the Visit Finland Criteria for Internationalization in Health Travel defined as standards that should help in positioning Finland’s health travel offer. It also included successful Finnish practices from Docrates Cancer Center, Clinic Helena, Kruunupuisto Health Resort and Luova Finland. The next webinar will be held in January, thus providing a market overview of Russia, China, and the UAE

Tourism is the third service export sector in Finland that generates EUR 3,5 billion of expenditures from 3,1 million tourist arrivals. New trends call for post-covid recovery in a clean and safe environment and for sustainable and innovative tourism products that include digital green transformation and the circular economy. With this regard, there is no doubt that Finland’s health travel and tourism has a profound and market-driven value proposition and that Finland’s medical and health care seems to be one of the world’s best kept secret.

Knowledge and expertise have enabled Finland to reach a steady position as one of the leading countries in terms of quality of life. In 2020, Finland topped the World Happiness Report third year in a row based on factors such as freedom, honesty, welfare, good health, and generosity. Finnish researchers continuously contribute to international medical research and towards developing innovative technologies. Finnish research groups, as members of the international scientific community, have achieved many breakthroughs in diagnostics and the treatment and prevention of cancer, cardiovascular diseases and neurological conditions.