Travelling for healthcare: Future challenges and opportunities for India in the new normal

Traveling abroad to seek healthcare services for medical or wellness purposes is a global phenomenon since the start of the 21st century. However, since the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation in 2020, due to pandemic related regulations, travel restrictions, and grounded airlines, traveling for health reasons has been negatively impacted, resulting in a decline in demand for overseas travel and healthcare services. There is now a pent-up demand by consumers to travel abroad for health tourism to countries such as Thailand, India, and Turkey. At the same time with opening borders and airline-travel resumed, countries cannot be complacent about health-risk involved. Therefore, safety and wellbeing of the health tourists during and post-pandemic under the new-normal paradigm is important.