A “goodwill agreement” was signed between Turkish Airlines (THY) and the Service Exporters’ Association (HIB) in order to provide health tourists arriving in Turkey with convenient transportation opportunities.
The signing ceremony for the agreement, which aims to increase Turkey’s income in health tourism to 5 billion dollars by 2023, was held at the THY Headquarters.
Speaking at the ceremony, HİB Chairman and THY Board of Directors and Executive Committee Chairman Ahmet Bolat said that Turkish Airlines’ passenger revenues increased by 8 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period of 2019 and approached 5.4 billion dollars, and cargo revenues increased 2.5 times to 2 billion. He said it exceeded the dollar level.
Stating that the Service Exporters’ Association has gained a strong momentum since its establishment in 2018 and has reached the number of 3 thousand members, Bolat talked about the developments experienced in the intervening period.
Bolat said that in 2021, 1.6 billion dollars of income was obtained from tourists visiting Turkey for health purposes, and there was an increase of 68 percent in the first quarter of this year. “However, the revenue from health care exports is far above these figures. In this context, 2.5 billion dollars of revenue is targeted from health care exports in 2022.” he said.
“The number of foreigners who find healing in Turkey will increase exponentially”
Ahmet Bolat, with the cooperation realized today, aims to; He said that “to ensure that foreigners who come for health reasons have easy access to Turkey and contribute to health exports”.
Stating that the Turkish health sector is now at the center of attention of tourists from all over the world, Bolat continued his words as follows:
“With the high quality and affordable treatment it provides, Turkey shines its star in the field of global health more and more. Our health tourists, whom we host with our fully-equipped modern hospitals and specialist doctors, make a great contribution to the promotion of our industry as honorary representatives of our country when they leave after regaining their health. We are pleased to be a stakeholder in such developments, which are also important in terms of diversification and diversification in the sector, and we declare that we will give all our support.”
Bolat stated that the cooperation that they laid the foundations of here in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding will turn into a situation that will provide tangible benefits to Turkey, the health sector and THY in a short time, and that it will serve to increase the number of foreign guests who come to Turkey and find healing exponentially.
“We plan to announce our 2023 service export target as 120 billion dollars”
THY Chairman of the Board of Directors, Bolat, stated that 55.2 billion dollars of revenue was obtained from service exports in 2021, and gave the following information:
“The figure we expect this year is over $80 billion. We are approaching one third of Turkey’s goods exports. We are planning to announce our 2023 service export target as 120 billion dollars at the Service Exporters’ Workshop that we will hold this year. Turkey’s 2023 tourism target is 53.5 billion dollars. When we add education and health tourism to this, this figure comes to 60 billion dollars.
In fact, with tourism and hotel services as the main engine of service exports, we have reached half of the target of 120 billion dollars in 2023. On top of that, THY’s service export figure, which was 8.5 billion dollars last year, rises to 14.5 billion dollars this year. We expect this figure to be around 18 billion dollars a year. Considering that this figure is $2 billion, along with other sister airlines, when you add up $20 billion, it becomes $80 billion. We think that we will easily reach the remaining 40 billion dollars together with the other 8 sectors.”
Mentioning the revenues that can be obtained from transportation services, Bolat said that the target for exports of goods and services in 2023 is 400 billion dollars.
HİB Health Services Sector Committee Chairman Prof. Dr. Pointing out Orhan Gazi Yiğitbaşı’s words that patients came to Turkey from 132 countries, he said, “As THY, we fly to 129 countries. We need to find those 3 countries and start flying to those countries as soon as possible.” he said.
“We are considering creating a package for the USA”
Stating that the number of tourists coming to Turkey from the USA this year is close to 1 million, this figure is small among the expected 55 million, Ahmet Bolat said, “We will hold an event in the USA in September and declare our target as 2.5 million with our friends in the union. In this context, we are currently considering creating a package with our friends in health tourism within the union.” made a statement.
Stating that they will be more active in health tourism from now on and they will implement new packages, Bolat said that they will reach countries where no patients have come so far.
“We will make special package prices for those who come for health”
Answering the questions of the members of the press, Bolat used the following statements on a question about the content of the agreement:
“We will make package prices. For example, we will have special business class prices for our patients who come for health tourism. We will encourage them to bring their families. There will be extra discounts when their families come. Details of these will be announced. For example, people used to go to the USA for treatment. There are very expensive services there. One of them is One of them is check-up service. We bring the person to Istanbul in 18-19 hours from any point in the USA. It takes 3-4 months to get a colonoscopy service there. We will both bring this patient to Turkey in a week and scan it from head to toe “He will rest for a week. He will take a vacation and return to his country at the end of a week by taking the analysis reports. This will be such a figure that it will be an accessible figure for the people there. In this way, we will have different services to different countries.”
Bolat stated that they will focus on a few countries as HIB this year, among them a country from South America and Japan.
Stating that they will make plans by focusing on which health service can be provided to which country, Bolat talked about the importance of promotion.
2023 target: 1.5 million patients, 5 billion dollars revenue
Service Exporters Union Health Services Sector Committee Chairman Prof. Dr. Orhan Gazi Yiğitbaşı stated that the size of the global health care export market is already approaching 100 billion dollars and said that Turkey is among the countries whose market volume is growing day by day.
Yiğitbaşı said, “Our country is in a position to be the market leader in world health service exports with its advanced infrastructure services, experience in the tourism sector, historical and cultural texture, geographical advantage, health service delivery, physician quality and our current technology.” he said.
Yiğitbaşı stated that they want to reach the biggest share they can get from this developing potential in the world by making the best use of Turkey’s advantages, and emphasized that the cooperation they will make with THY in this regard will contribute greatly to the sector.
Noting that 643 thousand patients came to Turkey for health purposes in 2021 and an income of 1.6 billion dollars was obtained from these people, Yiğitbaşı said, “We are pleased to observe on behalf of our country that this income has increased by 71 percent in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period of the previous year. Our target is 2022 with 1 million patients and 2.5 billion dollars in revenue, and 2023 with 1.5 million patients and 5 billion dollars in revenue.” used the phrases.
“We aim to be the most important service provider in the world”
prof. Dr. Orhan Gazi Yiğitbaşı talked about the projects and activities carried out by the Service Exporters’ Association and the HIB Health Committee, and stated that 711 health institutions are members of the committee.
“Our goal in health care exports is to be the most important service provider in the world, to distinguish ourselves from our competitors in a positive way, and to handle the most difficult cases with our superior health teams trained in our country.” Yiğitbaşı said:
“We are pleased to observe that the patients who prefer our country are mostly in branches such as oncology, organ transplantation, major surgery and in vitro fertilization. THY has been one of our biggest supporters in bringing patients from 132 different countries of the world to our country in Turkey. We thank the THY family on behalf of our industry and hope that our cooperation will continue to develop with this protocol.”
“There is an increase in the number of patients from Europe and overseas countries”
Yiğitbaşı, Chairman of the HIB Health Services Sector Committee, said that especially the Middle East countries, Iraq, Libya, the Balkans, North Africa and the Turkic Republics took the lead when asked about which countries received more patients.
Yiğitbaşı reported that interest in Turkey has increased in recent years from Europe and overseas countries, thanks to the rapid execution of complicated surgeries.
On the question of the share of city hospitals in health tourism, Yiğitbaşı said, “It is very early yet, but the share of these institutions from health tourism will increase in the coming years.” said.
Yiğitbaşı added that the foreign exchange left by the patients coming to Turkey per capita is around 2 thousand 250 dollars, and that in order to increase this, they should especially promote health services better.
Cooperation protocol signed
After the speeches, the cooperation protocol was signed by Orhan Gazi Yiğitbaşı, HİB Health Services Committee Vice President Adem Elbaşı, THY Deputy General Manager for Marketing and Sales Ahmet Olmış and THY Deputy General Manager for Flight Operations Mehmet Kadaifçiler.
Gift Güral, Chairman of HİB Tourism Sector Committee, also attended the signing ceremony.
.