Last few years have witnessed enormous shift in the tourism trends. The phenomenon is not confined to India as it spans across the world. As per the new trends, it has been realized that there are some types of tourism, which can become niche tourism in the Indian context.
Medical and wellness tourism are the most important constituents in the league. The pertinent reason behind this trend is that wellness and medical tourism are helping the travelers to save gobs of money. With new avenues in medicine, the cost for a medical treatment is far less in India compared to overseas.
It is particularly because of this huge cost saving, travelers from developed world and Middle East come to India for excellent and budgeted treatment. The majority of the patients come from the Middle East, who apart from the cost advantage, opt for Indian vicinities since it is closer and easily accessible.
But the real challenge before India is that it must convert a medical traveler into a tourist. Usually it has been seen that medical travelers return home as they are discharged from the hospitals. This is primarily due to strict visa procedures.
Due to cumbersome registration processes, it has been seen that medical travel in India is only restricted to medical treatment not going beyond that. The hassle is that every overseas patient has to be registered with the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and the procedure has to be done within 14 days.
Policies must be relaxed to an appropriate level. More liberalization is needed if we are to lift the medical and wellness tourism to make it niche travel in the Indian context.
As we know that most of our competitions offer free visa facilities, Indian authorities must rethink to further liberalize the procedure.
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