Medical tourism from China declinesTAIPEI, Taiwan -- Medical tourism is one of the six industries to bear the brunt of the drastic decline in the number of tourists from mainland China, with a market loss estimated at NT$245 million this year, according to a special report released by the Chinese-language United Evening News (UEN). The medical cosmetics center director of the China Medical University Hospital said that large-sized medical centers associated with large-sized hospitals in Taiwan would not impacted by the decline in medical tourism from mainland China, as such tourists are not their main target consumers. Instead, smaller medical centers or clinics cooperating with travel agencies had suffered the most from the ongoing shrinkage in mainland Chinese medical tourists. The hospital's medical beauty department received only one medical tourist group from the mainland China within the past two to three months, compared with one group per month in the early period after the government started issuing medical tourist visas to mainland Chinese people. Local travel agencies dedicated to organizing medical tours from the mainland were also seriously plagued by the sharp drop in inbound Chinese medical tourist groups.

Source: The China Post September 09, 2016 16:30 UTC