For the past 6 months I have written blog posting about India and its future importance to the 50-plus. This is a bit more proof. First Health Tourism, next long term care then retirement living.
Leading luxury hotel group is planning to join forces with an Indian hospital company to promote medical tourism in India.
Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, which has 74 luxury hotels across the world, is poised to work alongside Apollo Hospitals in a partnership that reflects a surge in medical tourism to India. Overseas visitors are keen to take advantage of the subcontinent's low-cost hospital treatments.
The sector, currently valued at £180 million a year, is expected to boom to £1.38 billion by 2012, says the Confederation of Indian Industry.
"It is the first time in this country that a major hotel chain has tied up with a big hospital group," a Taj official said this week.
A spokesman for Apollo Hospitals, which has 6,400 beds in 32 hospitals across India, confirmed that it was in talks with Taj about a medical tourism partnership. The hospital chain already has six international patient centres in cities across India and claims to treat 10 million patients from 55 countries.
But Apollo is just one of a number of specialist medical centres providing low-cost medical treatment. As many as 150,000 tourists visit India every year seeking non-emergency treatment in both conventional hospitals and traditional ayurvedic centres. Last year the Indian government announced plans to introduce medical visas for tourists seeking treatment during their visits.
Other sectors of the tourism industry are keen to take advantage of this boom in medical tourism. The Indian office of Cox & Kings, the tour operator, is in talks with Vedic India and the Omkar Trust, two of India's leading health care organisations, about medical tourism opportunities in the country.Dick Stroud
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