How Fertility Medical Travel Will Be Affected Post-COVID-19?

Fertility medical travel post- COVID-19 is challening but optimistic as well!

COVID-19 is affecting all countries and individuals directly or indirectly. COVID-19, an unknown name six months ago, is now a pandemic as declared by the World Health Organisation. COVID-19 has affected the financial markets and the tourism industry the most.  Let’s explore more about Fertility medical travel post-COVID-19!

For example, the USA has reached a point where they have impost fresh bans on the travel of the people, how they can meet and where they can gather. This is all done in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The restaurants and bars have also been closed in a view to halting this crisis.

But the situation will change after the COVID-19 crisis is over. However, how much will it change depending on the measures taken by each country? For example, people traveling for medical purposes will determine whether they want to go to other countries for fertility treatment or stay in their own country? Whether to make a long journey or not. This will depend on the measures taken by the country to facilitate medical tourism in the country.

It will also depend on how the small agencies, hospitals, and clinics will respond to the situation after COVID-19 is over. Their main aim will be to make a new market base in 2021 and retain the existing customers as well.

Medical issues that need to be tackled

Unlike the other crisis of weather, natural calamities, finances, etc COVID-19 will be a medical one. It will be difficult for any sort of tourism industry to bounce back to its feet even after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

However, many issues need to be tackled and measures to be taken by the individual countries to promote medical tourism (fertility tourism) or more specifically once the COVID-19 crisis is over.

1. Maximum Expenditure – There are several instances where the medical fertility tourism industry has done expenses at the wrong place. Before doing the expenses, it is really important to know whether your marketing campaigns are reaching the end customer or not?
2. Target Market – Here, you need to check out the country, age, gender, views, etc of the target market. What may be a target market for the medical tourism company in 2020 may not be in 2021? So, the medical tourism company has to chart out the changes in the target market.
3. Smaller market – The medical fertility tourism industry will have a smaller target market in 2020. So, the main aim is to determine whether the base of the target market will increase? If yes, then what measures are taken to increase the medical tourism base.
4. is it a permanent change? – Will the customers keep themselves in isolation even after COVID -19 pandemic is over? Will it a permanent change rather than a temporary one?  Will people go for long travel journeys or prefer only local or small journeys?
5. Be informed – One of the best medical fertility tourism industry can do is to keep informed. They should not only focus on the reports which give old records but also look after the analysis of the reports.

Suggestions made by WTTC

According to WTTC, (World Travel and Tourism Council) 50 million jobs of the medical fertility tourism industry are at risk amid COVID- 19 outbreaks. At the right time, WTTC will support the affected countries to recover. WTTC has called for a swift recovery of the medical fertility tourism industry once COVID -19 pandemic is over. Following are some of the suggestions made by WTTC –

1. Revoke the barriers – Once COVID -19 is over, ensure that the necessary barriers revoke especially in the tourism and travel industry. The pressure from the airports should be eased and one must ensure flexibility in the visa norms, if not for others, then especially for the medical fertility tourism industry.
2. One must support destinations with the tools available – Once COVID -19 is over, the countries should invest more in their medical tourism destinations. They should invest more in the marketing tools, assign proper resources for the promotion and do product development and should start preparing for welcoming the new tourists for the medical fertility tourism industry. For example, according to a report by WTTC, the USA is the largest market for inbound patients with spending of around $4 billion in 2017 and representing a share of 36% in the medical fertility tourism industry.
3. Make necessary changes in the fiscal policy – Ease the taxes on the travel of the people, reduce taxes on flight and accommodation of the people to boost the medical fertility tourism industry. Government policies play a very important role in boosting the medical fertility tourism industry. For example, Kuwait is the second-largest source of the outbound medical markets due to the ease of its government policies and regulations.
4. Make use of the incentives – As we all know the small medical travel providers are the most affected. These are the ones who have to downsize their economy and have to reduce marketing activities, etc. They are in a danger to disappear. So, they should introduce assistance and opportunities for businesses to promote business continuity of small medical travel providers.
5. Boost the facilitation of traveling – One should reduce the cost of traveling, improve the processing time and simplify the rules of the visas for traveling. One should implement more effective solutions for smooth and safe journeys. This is one of the most important steps to boost the medical fertility tourism industry.

Conclusion

Fertility medical travel post-COVID-19  or any other sort of cross-border travel pleasure or medical-related will be drastically affected.  People will hesitate to go abroad or postpone their plans.  Some of them might choose to do any sort of medical treatment in their countries, even if they have to spend more.

The road ahead is not easy for the fertility medical tourism industry. Therefore, necessary steps are must fight the after-effects of coronavirus and the same level of trust and confidence need to be generated among the fertility seekers.

The IVF clinics, the third-party reproductive agencies, and the medial facilitator need to be prepared to fight back. We have been working closely with our current and new intended parents, the IVF Clinics, and surrogacy agencies around the works seamlessly.  Slowly but steadily, all is coming to normal, but still, not like it was before.  We all are taking one small step at a time and hope to have more robust travel activities once COVID Vaccines become available to all.

If you’d like to learn more about IVF, Egg Donation, or surrogacy services globally, check out the rest of our website at  IVF Conceptions. We offer legally secure and affordable surrogacy consulting services for FREE.