In this section, we have proposed a concept for the development of health and medical tourism by suggesting a model of simultaneous restructuring and conversion of specialized rehabilitation hospitals into health tourism destinations.
The establishment of around 15 destinations in a short time would follow a model, as we wrote more than two years ago, similar to that applied in the 1980s when branding and organizing old and newly built marinas into ACI marinas quickly made Croatia a nautical destination. We have the basis for the same model in the strategies for health and tourism that have been accepted in the meantime. Thus, we have the foundation, but not an action plan that would enable such a shift and implementation.
Search for New Locations Therefore, the Association for the Development of Medical Tourism and Medical Group d.o.o., a consulting company specialized in consulting for health tourism, presented an action plan for 2013 to 2017 at a recently held round table titled ‘Croatia, Year-Round Riviera of Europe, Strategic and Legal Framework for the Development of Health Tourism,’ which includes the development of projects for current specialized hospitals and health resorts (about 15) and the creation of conceptual solutions and feasibility studies for about 15 other projects on private or state land.
It is anticipated that projects for current spas will be completed in six months, by September, when an investor conference will be organized as part of the Fourth International Conference on Medical Tourism to present the prepared projects. The implementation of such projects and new locations along the coast and on the islands would provide health infrastructure for the off-season activation of many vacant accommodation capacities in elite hotels. This would ensure better utilization of hotel capacities and alleviate the obsession with building new ones, which would still be used for three to four months.
Namely, understanding that potential users of tourist services in the broadest sense during the off-season are most often in their third age, we must admit that we are not ready to accept such guests. In that age group, the need for health services is much more likely than during the summer season when most guests are younger people with children. Older tourists need health services set at the level of ‘fire service that must exist in case of need.’
Unique Health Brand We can seriously assert that the lack of health infrastructure for tourists limits the development of Croatian off-season tourism, i.e., tourism for the third age. By establishing a network of health tourism destinations – green marinas of health tourism – which would be profit centers in their own right, but also necessary infrastructural health capacities for the local population and such tourists. Thus, they would also be declared and branded as a new service of Croatian tourism.
