Medical emergencies are never planned for nor invited. They are urgent and at times, requires one to drop everything in order to head out to a medical professional. As most prefer heading to their own GP during times of crisis, these medical appointments might sometimes even extend beyond the Klang Valley.
It then becomes an unnecessary hassle for patients and at times, even family members, who not only have the well-being of the patient in mind, but other ancillary necessities too, such as accommodation for the night.
Online healthcare booking platform, BookDoc has partnered with Agoda to solve this problem. Now, whenever one has an appointment which requires travelling locally or abroad, they can look up and book a nearby hotel at the same time.
Chevy Beh of BookDoc told Vulcan Post that Agoda was the perfect partner for this aim, as they are the largest aggregator of hotels in Asia. This would certainly benefit the huge amount of medical tourists who prefer getting their medical treatment abroad.
BookDoc recognises that there is a big market of medical tourists and they want to tap into that. As Chevy puts it, “In this region alone, medical tourism is worth about USD6 billion. Medical tourists amount to about USD250 million in Malaysia, with around 850,000 tourists. In Singapore, there are about 1 million tourists, generating about USD800 million. In Thailand, there are 3.8 million tourists generating about USD3 billion, and for Hong Kong, the 5 million medical tourists generate about USD2 billion worth.”
Whilst booking a hotel might not be too much of a hassle, the BookDoc-Agoda partnership certainly allows users another option to expedite their accommodation-booking and have just one less thing to worry about.
Feature Image Credit: Bioethics.com
