Global Medical Tourism Summit started
Today, Global Medical Tourism Summit opened as part of the online programme of the MedTravelExpo 2020 international exhibition.
Organisers of the event: St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee, State Budgetary Institution "Congress and Exhibition Bureau", St. Petersburg Medical Tourism Agency with the support of the National Medical Tourism Council and Expocentre AO. The summit was moderated by Evgeny Chernyshev, President of the National Medical Tourism Council, and Natalia Yudina, Executive Director of the National Medical Tourism Council.
Sergey Korneev, Chairman of St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee, opened the plenary session. In his speech he underlined that St Petersburg is the only constituent entity of the Russian Federation where a medical tourism agency has been established to work with medical centres. Mikhail Remizov, the representative of St. Petersburg Committee for Health Care, told in his presentation about what has been achieved in 2020 in terms of medical tourism development and about the plans for 2021.
Following the plenary session, Elena Lysenkova, Head of the Department of State Tourism Projects and Tourism Security of the Federal Agency for Tourism, shared data on the overall situation of medical tourism in Russia. Michel Julian, Senior Programme Officer of the Department of Market Research and Competitiveness in Tourism of the World Tourism Organization shared optimistic forecasts for the recovery of the tourism industry in the world.
During the first session dedicated to Russian-Chinese cooperation in the field of Medical and Health Tourism, a great presentation was made by Jia Xiao Fang, President of the China International Health & Medical Tourism Association. She shared data on the state of medical tourism in China, spoke about the modern platform that has been created for the development of medical tourism, and invited all participants of the event to the specialised exhibition WMTC in 2021.
Evgeny Nikonov, Deputy Chairman of the Government of Khabarovsk Krai on social issues, and Suzanna Mkrtchyan, Vice-President of the Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, joined the discussion on opportunities for cooperation with China in medical tourism.
Sergey Anufriev, Doctor of Medical Science, associate professor, Director of St. Petersburg Medical Forum, Gamzat Omarov, Doctor of Medical Science, Executive Director of St. Petersburg Medical Tourism Agency, and other industry experts spoke about the development of medical and health tourism in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The topic of marketing and branding in medical tourism was a key one in the final session of the first day of the summit. Irina Bedash, Project Head of MedTravelExpo, spoke about Russian Health Care Week 2020 and the advantages that the exhibition offers to entrepreneurs to promote services and products.
The summit will continue its work online tomorrow, on December 10.
The exhibition’s online programme website: https://www.zdravo-expo.ru/ru/events/
Press Service, EXPOCENTRE AO