Medical Travel Brand Management: Success Strategies for Hospitality Bridging Healthcare (H2h)

This new volume, which complements the editors’ earlier volume Medical Travel Brand Management: Success Strategies for Hospitality Bridging Healthcare (H2H), explores the multitude of medical travel services and discusses the integration of traveling medical guests with destination providers, hospitality/healthcare professionals, and travel service providers. The editors also address the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has made on the travel industry, which has motivated them to bring together major players, renowned authors, practitioners, and researchers to create this book to help prepare the medical tourism market to not only recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic but also to provide tools and cases that will help to structure successful destinations for medical travel.

From chapters on branding to assessing accreditation and post-care quality metrics, Drs. DeMicco, Poorani, and their fellow contributors take the reader through the critical phases of the medical travel journey: pre-visit, travel, on-site care, discharge and follow-up care. The authors address critical issues facing medical, health, and wellness travel from both macro and micro perspectives. Presentations of best practices and strategies demonstrate how some destinations have built, renewed, or engaged various stakeholders to construct or enhance their medical tourism destination.

Medical Travel: Hospitality Bridging Healthcare (H2H) (c) also showcases best practices and innovative ways of designing and operating a profitable and entrepreneurial practice. Quality issues, aesthetics, and legal issues related to inbound and outbound medical tourism are also presented. The book explores the evolving nature of hospital design and the complex relationship between people and medicine as manifested in the relationship of hospital aesthetics to patient satisfaction.

Importantly, the book also includes a chapter addressing medical health travel during the pandemic which describes how the pandemic has revolutionized telehealth and the medical travel industry, which can leverage the advances made in digital health and telemedicine.

This volume will be an important resource for the four main players at the center of medical travel: medical travelers themselves, government agencies, intermediaries, and health and wellness providers. The selected best practices, research, cases, innovative strategies, SWOT analysis, and toolkits address the aims of all stakeholders.

Frederick J. DeMicco, PhD, RDN, is the Executive Director and Professor in the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Northern Arizona University, USA. Formerly he was Professor and the Aramark Endowed Department Chair in the Lerner College of Business & Economics in Hospitality Business Management at the University of Delaware. He was Associate Director of the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management (HRRM) at Penn State University, where he was Professor-in-Charge of the Hotel & Restaurant Management undergraduate program and also was the Professor-in-Charge of the Master of Science and PhD graduate programs for five years. He presently is a Conti Distinguished Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Dr. DeMicco is the President of the International Academics and the Dean of Business Executive and Professional Programs at the Learning Village in Tuscany (SIAF) Campus in Volterra, Tuscany, the home of Innovation and Imagineering. Dr. DeMicco was also a Darden Eminent Scholar Chair Visiting Professor to the University of Central Florida-Rosen College, the USF Sarasota- Manatee, and Colorado State University; and currently is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware, USA. Dr. DeMicco has worked in healthcare at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and at Walt Disney World in hotel management where he obtained a Ductorate Degree from Disney University, Orlando, Florida. Dr. DeMicco was the President of International CHRIE-NENA (Northeast North American Federation). He was presented the International CHRIE/Cornell Howard B. Meek Award of Excellence for 2017.

Ali A. Poorani, PhD, is an Associate Professor with expertise in leadership and entrepreneurship. He is the Director of Hospitality Associates for Research & Training (HART), which offers a variety of research and training programs for the hospitality and healthcare industries. He developed the University of Delaware’s Patient Experience Academy, in conjunction with Christiana Care Health System. He has published several scholarly articles, including Hospitality Bridging Healthcare. Dr. Poorani has worked in the hospitality industry for more than 14 years. He has conducted many workshops, focus groups, and training programs nationally and internationally, bringing hospitality to healthcare with a vision to make hospitals truly hospitable. His long-term engagement with the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (ICHRIE) includes: past board member of ICHRIE Finance Committee; chair, ICHRIE Finance SIG; board member for the Association of Hospitality Financial Management Educators (AHFME); member of ICHRIIE Strategic Planning Committee; ICHRIE Finance Committee; and Hospitality Industry Professionals-SIG. He also serves on the advisory board for Medical Tourism and Global Healthcare Research Summit. Dr. Poorani is a recipient of various community service awards, such as the 2005 Champion of Club Education Award, 2009 Alfred Lerner College of Business Outstanding Service/Outreach Award, the 2012 University of Delaware Excellence in Advising and Mentoring Award, and the 2014 Leon and Margaret Slocomb Professional Excellence Award.