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Good afternoon, dear friends, my name is Vlad Androsov.
I started one of the first medical tourism tour operators in Belarus when I was quite young.
Today I can gladly share my experience.
VLADISLAV ANDROSOV: medical tourism in business perspective
Medical tourism is a new trend of the world industry of tourism,
it began to develop as an independent phenomenon in the 20th century,
when people started to travel in order to get more qualified medical help
to those countries, where such help is provided on a higher level by professional specialists.
There is 75% of medical treatments within the medical tourism
and there is only 25% of tourism as we all know it, which includes accommodation,
catering, transport, transfer and escort.
DO YOU SEE YOUR BUSINESS as an intermediation between a client and a hospital?
I don't like to have it about intermediation.
We help promoting our hospitals at the international market.
We just advertise the services that our hospitals provide.
We do the part of their work, which they are not able to perform due to congestion in their actual duties. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
For example, they have no time to sms to Russia the email address
which a client can use to send the X-ray photos and other medical information,
handle it at ones and give a call to the client in Russia.
This service is not provided by the hospitals.
We offer the client a package of services, which is not that expensive.
There is a personal manager, who visits the client,
brings him food, takes him to the bank, to the pharmacy, if needed.
We try to adjust to the needs of our client
and that's why we get very good responses.
WHICH AREAS OF MEDICAL TOURISM ARE MOSTLY DEMANDED?
Right now there is a high demand on dentistry.
Beside that there is also ophthalmology, plastic surgery.
All these procedures become of higher demand.
So far we don't work a lot on such complex issues as organ transplantation.
But considering the optimization of our legislation,
we are on the winning position among the CIS countries,
that is why we have a huge demand and we are overwhelmed with requests.
IS IT DIFFICULT TO START A BUSINESS IN A NEW AREA IN BELARUS?
The young enthusiasm played its role in the beginning.
It all seemed real, possible and easy to fulfill, but in reality it was not that easy.
To get into this grownup world, world of medicine,
which has so many issues that are difficult to understand.
They did pay attention to my age. Today I am 25, but when I started I was just 22.
We had to prove, that we had something, while in fact there was not that much yet.
We had to play "in advance", agree to the certain terms, which we were not certain about.
Partner platform was one of the difficulties,
but after that we faced the difficulty of marketing in the sphere of the services we offered.
There was no big budget for marketing, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
actually there is no big budget today as well (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
for the marketing on the international scale, on TV or radio. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
Even banner advertisements on good portals abroad cost a lot, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
that's why we had to hire different companies that were busy with advertising. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
Finally we came to that point, were we are able to perform a part of our marketing development ourselves.
Of course there are certain issues we have handled by professionals with narrow specification.
HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED AS A STARTUP CAPITAL?
You can start a business if you have minimum 10.000 dollars
And you have to understand which expenses will be absolutely necessary
and which expences you can skip at first, such as advertisements for example.
If you know, here, you have some money,
you have a plan of actions
than you can give it a try.
But there are no guaranties,
nobody can guarantee that you won't lose your money,
this is taking risk, there is no other way you can put it.
Yes, we had our own money that came from different sources.
I didn't want to work with investors, I still don't want to do that,
because I don't want to share my business with people,
who didn't do anything to maintain the business,
who just gave you the money.
I prefer to wait a bit and develop it myself.
DO THE OFFICIALS HELP OR DO THEY CREATE OBSTACLES TO THE DELELOPMENT OF A BUSINESS?
It was our own initiative, there was no help to expect and there were no credits available.
We spent our own money on everything we were doing,
but of course we still needed more support.
We had to ask for advice by the Ministry of Sport and Tourism (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
in order to identify ourselves on this market, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
to show that we have understanding of where we are going to, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
differentiate ourselves from the large tour operators,
which were trying to add medical tourism to the list of the services they provided.
They got acquainted with us at the Ministry of Sport and Tourism;
they gave response to our questions, the Tourism Department helped a lot.
In a while we got contacts at the Ministry of Health.
The officials understood and saw the relevance of our work,
they didn't work against us.
Even more, they give direction to our work, help,
showing which way it's better to go,
taking into consideration the specification of our complex system of public health services.
ARE THE HOSPITALS READY TO MEET THE PATIENTS FROM THE WEST?
I got European education, went on internship to Europe, to Italy,
I visited my relatives in the Netherlands a lot,
due to these facts I developed a European mindset
and of course, European market was my target at first.
I wanted to show, that Belarus is a European country as well,
that we can offer our services on a highly qualitative level.
But it was a mistake.
I understood it later, when I saw,
that there was no demand on our services,
Belarus has no proper image yet,
not only in the medical world, but also in tourism.
That's why we didn't get any response,
no clients, we were broke.
We understood that it was a big mistake, but we didn't stop.
We had a Russian version of our site.
It was not complete yet. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
But we started to work on it (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
and in a half a year we had a proof that it was what we needed. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
There came our Russian-speaking clients, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
it was much more convenient for us, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
they didn't ask a lot of questions, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
they did realize where they came to, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
they all actually know what it means, post soviet area. Such clients know where they are going to. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
A foreigner doesn't know how it works here and it's difficult to explain it to him (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
We've made a right choice and we are already for two years busy with this market, the market of CIS.
We are still trying to explore other marketing areas, but very gently.
However, Russia, Kazakhstan, CIS in its whole, - that is what we need.
We don't need to invent bicycle again, we just need to work for our own market, get experience,
gradually start competing with Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, on the european market.
ABOUT ACHIEVEMENTS AND SUCCESS
In 2012 we welcomed and helped to organise their treatment to more than 200 patients.
They were mainly Russian citizens,
but we also gave consultancies to more than 1000 foreign patients. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
That will say, we told them which clinics is better, which doctor, etc (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
We got their requests, worked them out and then these patients didn't come back. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
Maybe they got medical treatment somewhere else, without our help. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
In the first decade of this year there came about 70 patients, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
which means that we are growing. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
I hope, that it will keep growing, because at the moment (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
we are trying to implement new advertising strategies, we hope, it will have its impact. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
Beside all that, we finally start welcoming the relatives and colleagues of our patients. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
We expected it to happen earlier, we first thought that right after their visit their friends would contact us. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
But it didn't work like that. It's starting only now. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
We have our hopes to "word of mouth", as we understand that it's topical and it works, because we have really great responses. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
We don't have clients, who are not satisfied, just none! (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
If there is a situation which involves a conflict, we choose to avoid it. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV www.medtravelbelarus.com)
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATION?
Taking into consideration the fact that we are expanding our services of customer accompaniment, (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV medtravelbelarus.com)
there is an idea to create a so-called consjerzh- service, that will say, meeting the foreigners and providing them different services here. (VLADISLAV ANDROSOV medtravelbelarus.com)
If it's interesting to someone, I am ready to talk not only about that we provide such service, but also to discuss a certain kind of collaboration in this sphere.
This is topical. And it will happen, because there is Hockey World Championship, which is coming and I think not only us, but many others are awaiting that.
Beside that we always consider various types of accommodation.
The amount of clients grows, most of them don't want to go to expensive hotels, but prefer more or less budget variant,
we keep on looking for partners in this sphere.
If you there is somebody you know, who is interested in medical help in Belarus, you can always consult us,
You can always contact us, the contact information is easy to find on the internet
You can always ask us for advice, whether it's possible to find proper help
We don't charge for giving an advice. Consultation is free of charge.
We only accept payment after we have done something for our clients, that will say, the client came, got his/her medical treatment, after this he/she pays us.
Everything we are doing in advance, is free, we give consultations, explain how it all works.
Another important issue is that we are ready to build on a certain network of finding clients.
It doesn't matter if it's a legal entity, official or a formal structure,
it may be an individual entrepreneur abroad who is able to help the patients finding us.
We are ready to work with foreign clients without any problems.
If you are interested, you can always contact me personally and discuss it in any convenient manner.
WHAT WILL YOUR COMPANY BECOME IN A YEAR?
I will meet you in a new office I will make a tour for you.
You will meet the specialists, who joined our team.
They will work not only in Belarus, the challenge is to work on the development of medical tourism worldwide.
This I can promise right now. I am sure it will happen.
It will be my peasure to tell you about it when it will work. I will give you a detailed description of how it works.
VLADISLAV ANDROSOV: MEDICAL TOURISM IN BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE translated by www.rus-vertaal.nl