An EU-funded project, the Adriatic Health and Vitality Network (AHVN), seeks to establish a co-coordinated system of health and medical tourism that spans everything from conventional and alternative healthcare centres to thermal baths and healing spas.
An EU-funded project, the Adriatic Health and Vitality Network (AHVN), seeks to establish a co-coordinated system of health and medical tourism that spans everything from conventional and alternative healthcare centres to thermal baths and healing spas.
The Adriatic Health and Vitality Network (AVHN) has an overall objective to stimulate sustainable health tourism within and between the partner regions, increasing high-value tourist visits within the interrelated niches of medical tourism, alternative health tourism, spa and wellness tourism, and active lifestyles tourism.
By strengthening networks, the AHVN’s specific objectives are:
• To encourage high quality tourism products integrated with local and regional cultural and natural heritage offerings. This network aims to merge healthy food, good accommodation, recreational activities, medical and wellness services, and authentic culture into unique tourist experience networked throughout the Adriatic region.
• To enhance inland tourism and expand the tourist season, thus relieving some of the pressure from the current focus on high season seaside tourism.
• To train and network health tourism service providers from partner regions for high-quality tourism service delivery.
The project leader is the School of Economics and Business (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), where the project co-coordinator is Natasa Kovacevic. Partners in the project are Association Healthy Entrepreneur (Koper, Slovenia), City of Buzet (Croatia), Hotel Tartini (Piran, Slovenia) and Green Home (Podgorica, Montenegro).
The project is supported by the financial assistance of the IPA Adriatic Cross-Border Cooperation Programme.
As Balkan countries seek to boost revenues in the tourism sector, medical tourism is an increasingly attractive market.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is seeing an increase in dental tourists — primarily from Western Europe, but also from the USA, Australia and New Zealand -to take advantage of high-quality dental work and low prices. Most visitors come during the summer, and despite economic woes, most clinics in Sarajevo, have seen a steady increase in business year on year. Bosnia and Herzegovina is taking business from Croatia and Serbia, as prices are lower. Prices for dental treatment in Germany are five times higher, while in Spain, prices are nearly three times the amount. Like many Balkan countries, dentists use the same materials and have the same standards as Western Europe, with the latest technology and methods.
Many Balkan dental tourists are people who emigrated to Western Europe for better pay. AHVN seeks to widen the market to other Western Europeans. Dr Almir Pestek, of the Sarajevo Economic Institute, says that while the potential is good, BiH’s international image as a politically unstable country keeps tourists away.
The AHVN project expects to integrate a minimum of 50 tourism service providers into an Adriatic-wide medical tourism network, create industry-wide standards to be implemented across the region, and engage in a hard-hitting marketing campaign. There is a need for a comprehensive approach to the medical tourism industry across the region – and the project recognises the benefit of regional integration and support services. Health tourism requires a more active role of tourist associations in promoting this type of service, as well as of each state. Most countries here have developed medical and health tourism with little or no official support. The region has yet to fully tap the potential and if it gets organized will challenge better known competitors in Asia.
Croatia and Montenegro are already popular seaside resort destinations that have high-quality private medical and dental practices. Serbia is particularly strong on dental tourism, and Slovenia is an increasingly popular destination for cheap medical check-ups.
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