GEORGE TOWN: Penang will enhance its promotional efforts to expand its medical tourism sector to several other countries by next year.
State Tourism and Creative Economy Committee chairman Wong Hon Wai said that, based on its plan, some of the new markets the Penang medical tourism sector is eyeing include the Middle East, Asia and Central Asia like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.
He said various efforts, including having more direct flights, are being actively carried out to attract more medical tourists from these countries to Penang.
“Most of our medical tourists now are from Indonesia because Penang has frequent flights with four cities over there, namely Aceh, Medan Jakarta and Surabaya... many from there come here for treatment
“Our target is to open new markets... not just from these four cities in Indonesia but other cities near them. For example, we have flights to and from Jakarta but not Bandung... so are working on having more flights from there (Bandung),” he told reporters after officiating the Penang Economic, Education and Environment Forum here today.
Wong said that besides Indonesia, Penang is also looking at new markets to promote its medical tourism as there are many flights to China, Hong Kong and the Middle East countries.
He said Malaysia, especially Penang, is the preferred choice of patients from abroad seeking healthcare here due to the high-quality specialist doctors and highly-trained nurses available, in addition to good medicine.
He added that Penang generates 45 per cent of Malaysia’s revenue in the medical tourism sector and is the number one in the sector due to frequent flights and tourists coming here for medical treatment.
“It’s not just our high quality of treatment that sees medical tourists coming here but also the high quality of our doctors and nurses,” he said.
