Evaluating the Hospitality Services and Marketing Activities Offered to Medical Tourists in the Egyptian JCI Certified Hospitals

Helmy, Nahla; Zaki, Michael

doi:10.21608/ijhth.2019.31998

Evaluating the Hospitality Services and Marketing Activities Offered to Medical Tourists in the Egyptian JCI Certified Hospitals

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

10.21608/ijhth.2019.31998

Abstract

Travelling abroad for health benefits is not a recent concept, but it has been gaining more momentum and media interest in the last decades. In Egypt, medical tourism has also become one of the arising tourism types that recently emerged. Medical tourism success greatly depends on the quality of hospitality services and marketing activities implemented by hospitals management and offered to medical tourists. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the overall hospitality services and marketing activities in the top-notch medical centers in Egypt, which are the JCI certified hospitals. This evaluation involves both strong points and weak points of hospitality services and marketing activities offered to medical tourists. Strong points are utilized as a model of professional hospitality services and marketing activities, so as to be given to other Egyptian hospitals that plan to receive medical tourists. On the other hand, weak points are employed as lessons to be learned by such Egyptian hospitals through avoiding the JCI hospitals’ defects and mistakes. This research has selected seven JCI certified hospitals, representing 77.7% of the total JCI hospitals in Egypt. Research has tackled a questionnaire with 47 medical tourists in all visited hospitals for getting the quantitative data and an interview with 7 managers working in the seven visited hospitals for obtaining the qualitative data. Field survey analysis confirmed that there are many strong points which embodied in the proficient marketing activities done for attracting a larger number of medical tourists in the JCI hospitals. Moreover, all hospitality standards are generally followed starting from medical tourist arrival till departure. On the other hand, there are some few weak points such as the limited accommodation arrangements for medical tourists’ companions, no entertainment activities offered to patients in the visited hospitals as well as the preparation of tourist’s sightseeing during the medical tourist visit does not exist.

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