Towards the Development of Egyptian Medical Tourism Sector

EMAN M. HELMY, ROBERT TRAVERS
Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, Helwan University, Cairo, Orman Post Office, 12612, Egypt.
International Centre for Responsible Tourism, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

A B S T R A C T
Medical tourism has shown an exceptional growth worldwide during the last few years. Such growth has involved an increase in the number of the
international medical tourists, and the emergence of competitive medical tourism destinations. Arguably, the success of each destination in entering
the medical tourism business will greatly depend on its ability to develop a comprehensive and competitive accredited medical tourism business. This paper outlines the strategy development stage of a national project for the development of Egyptian medical tourism. Based on a preceding phase, benchmarking the Egyptian medical tourism sector against international key players, the strategic approach involved a number of tasks: identifying Egypt’s competitive advantages, debating different scenarios for the sector development, setting short and long term Egyptian medical tourism goals and drawing main pillars for the medical tourism development. Pillars identified by research findings are: an enabling environment, product development, human resource development and marketing.


K E Y W O R D S
Medical tourism
Competitive advantage
Development scenarios
Strategic development pillars
Service value chain–Egypt