The Philippines is considering the diffences between marketing to the spa tourist and the health care tourist. For instance because using spa facilities is a lifestyle choice vs. health care being a needs choice it is much easier to wrap a spa visit into a vacation. For the health care tourist the opposite is true. They wrap a vacation into a trip for treatment. Also, spas will recruit massage therapists, mostly high school graduates, where as dental and medical faciliites need highly educated and trained doctors.
Currently spas in the Philippines are found in the tourist destination areas like Boracay, Cebu and the hot springs of Los Banos and Pansol. The hospitals are largely in the urban areas with tourist attractions not as readily available.
The Philippines recognizes that spas and health care facilities can be combined which would make both more attractive to the tourist. Further they recognize that dental services are the easiest to begin combining because a dental facility is far cheaper to set up than a hospital and, many times, the services are non-urgent in nature meaning that the foreigner taking a dental vacation can much more easily fold a vacation into the health trip to the Philippines.
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