Are health tourism conferences, congresses, forums, and summits headed for market indifference?
Henry Ford once said of his Model T: “The customer can have any color he wants so long as it’s black.” Of course, it wasn’t long before market pressure and changing cultural norms forced a change in auto design. Adaptability enabled Ford Motor Company to become one of the most successful and longest-lived auto manufacturers in history. Is it time to re-examine the business of medical tourism networking and trade events?
I believe that the model of a few show and tell presentations, a flurry of 20-minute panel presentations without any substantive topic development presented by panelists either blatantly or surreptitiously hawking services and other agendas from the podium, and speed-dating B2B meetings have run their course.
The Importance of Networking
First, while networking is absolutely important, I cannot vet the quality, safety or destination appeal and readiness of health tourism provider on the basis of a handshake, a brochure, and a 15-minute interaction. I need to walk their halls and observe the customer service, cultural and language mastery, and quality and safety practices in action. And for me personally as a former hospital administrator and surgical nurse, I want a list of all their advanced medical technologies, a directory of their celebrity doctors and their CVs, a copy of their privacy and security policies, to observe of at least six cases in their operating theater, and have a look around at the health tourism local value chain suppliers and airport connections and fare tariffs to determine destination living brand and feasibility.
Marketing Drivel and Poorly-prepared Presentations
Second, I am unable to politely listen to poorly designed micro speeches and illegible, low-contrast graphics and poor screen-presentation color choices on PowerPoint, Keynote and Prezi slides that lack the substantive content I need to decide if the supplier can fill a need for one of our clients. Conference organizers and panel moderators that refuse to accept responsibility to vet slides, handouts, and other presentation materials in advance for content appropriateness and readability should simply decline when asked to participate.
Destination Sales Pitches
Third, while I believe that there should be a “pitch track” to allow sellers to sell, but I believe that this should be organized on a showcase format that runs on a parallel track to educational programs. These should be coordinated so that they start and end at coordinated times, without overlap. Adult attendees should be free to select sessions from a menu of educational programs, workshops, and destination showcases without being forced to sit through presentations that don’t serve a purpose for them.
Table Manners and other Civilities
Fourth, meal times are not appropriate for real networking, because it is not polite to talk with one’s mouth full. Also, one may not want everyone at the table to hear details of a discussion, nor may everyone at the table be interested in where the “ringleader” has taken the discussion.
Raising the Bar on Content Quality
Health tourism conferences, congresses, forums, and summits are profit-driven, even when they are sponsored “in association with” non-profit trade associations. It’s time that industry conference organizers recognize the “market forces” and pay heed to “customers” and adapt. Their ability to compete in a global economy relies on it. More and more conferences are available from which to choose.
Hiring professional workshop leaders, trainers, and speakers that inspire the market to the next quantum jump in medical tourism market development is far different from inviting a panelist from far away to come talk about a topic for twenty minutes. Many authors of books don’t speak well – unless they are speaking about the benefit of buying their books…or buying placement in their books. It actually depends on what the book is about. Consultants who are asked to conduct workshops should be held accountable to deliver course objectives, not pitch consulting services from the podium through “hire me for the rest of the story” teaser sessions.
Finding the Funds to Underwrite Good Content
It no longer suffices to pay lip-service to the need for sharper skills, better education and training, and substantive topics on health tourism. If conference organizers can’t afford to pay international business class airfare and professional speaker fees to world-class professional speakers, workshop leaders, and trainers, they should ask sponsors to support a session with the underwriting of those costs.
To move the health tourism industry forward, it is not enough to think of the education necessary to prepare the entrepreneurs, knowledge workers, government agencies, and marketers for the challenges of tomorrow’s health tourism as a series of meaningless and unrecognized certifications and discreet units existing side-by-side without logical connections. As an industry, we must build “learning communities.” To quote Ford: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
New Paradigms for Sustainability
As a paradigm is stretched to its limits, anomalies — failures of the current paradigm to take into account observed phenomena — accumulate. From where I sit, this paradigm shift has begun. The puzzle solutions are evolving within the context of the new paradigm. Those of us who have sustained their medical tourism business for more than five years are already solving their own business puzzles within the new paradigm. More conferences, congresses, forums, and summits to line the pockets of the organizers without accountability for real value to participants and exhibitors won’t be a part of that solution.
It’s time to re-examine the value proposition of all these health tourism conferences, congresses, forums, and summits and the sacrificed time they rob from the profit-making business activities that deliver actual revenue. I know my board has laid down the law for me for 2014. If we can’t realize 10x in measurable revenue compared with the lost productivity and attendance costs for me to be away, I can no longer justify attendance. I’ve heard from many other executives, colleagues, sponsors, and exhibitors that their boards and decision committees are giving similar diktats. If you have received similar orders, add your comments below so organizers will hear the voices of their consumers.
