Calcutta Gears Up to Join the Medical Vacation Bandwagon

Calcutta: Vying for a Slice of the Medical Vacation Pie

The historic eastern Indian city of Calcutta, or Kolkata in its new avatar, has long been associated with crowded slums, congested streets, and the Missionaries of Charity hospices for lepers and orphans that were founded by Mother Teresa.  Hollywood flicks like “City of Joy,” which focused on the human rickshaw pullers of the city, did little to change that image.  Lately, however, Calcutta has begun to shed its drab exterior and has been fervently wooing foreign tourists with medical vacation packages and luxury travel vacations.  Due to rising costs, which are a major problem in healthcare in the developed world, many Westerners are looking to countries like India for cheaper healthcare options. Metro areas like New Delhi and Bangalore have not missed a beat, keeping up with this new demand for healthcare.  Calcutta, it seems, doesn’t intend to watch from the sidelines and is pulling out all the stops to attract tourists from the Middle East, Europe, and Asia with well packaged medical vacations in conjunction with luxury travel vacations.

New Found Allies to Help Calcutta Develop Its Medical Vacation Industry

Recently, Emirates, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, announced that it was in the process of drawing up a plan to maximize Calcutta’s medical tourism potential in West Asia.  According to Nabil Sultan, Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, West Asia and the Indian Ocean, a team of doctors from West Asia would visit private hospitals in Calcutta like AMRI, Apollo Gleneagles, and Woodlands Hospitals to discuss the possibility of partnerships.

Rising Costs Are a Major Problem in Healthcare in the West: Opportunity for Calcutta

Because rising costs are becoming a major problem in healthcare in the West, there are ample opportunities for cities like Calcutta to develop and promote their medical tourism industry.  Emirates has also announced a number of luxury travel vacation packages from Calcutta to sunny locales like the Seychelles and Mauritius as well as more glamorous cities like Paris.  Zurich, Sydney, Cairo, Istanbul, and South Africa are also on the list of exotic luxury travel vacations offered by the carrier.  All this taking to the skies can only bolster Calcutta’s inherent medical tourism potential, and the city plans to accelerate the pace of growth in this field over the next few years.

Source: Staff reporter, “Airline Holiday Packages a Big Hit – More and More Opting for Dubai and Beyond as Tour Destinations,” The Telegraph, November 01, 2006