Visa and Dubai Health Authority (DHA) Sign Pact to Facilitate Emirate’s Tourism Industry
Visa and Dubai Health Authority (DHA) Sign Pact to Facilitate Emirate’s Tourism Industry :
As part of the DHA’s broader plans to boost health tourism in Dubai, the Authority has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Visa.
According to the DHA, the collaboration with the global payments company aims to promote Dubai as a destination of choice for medical services. The Visa-DHA agreement involves critical initiatives that will expectedly boost the competitiveness of Dubai’s health sector.
Key Takeaways from the Pact
On July 21, the DHA and Visa representatives signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The agreement involves Visa collaborating with its bank partners to provide healthcare discounts to Visa cardholders. According to the DHA, the Visa discounts will be placed on healthcare services the Dubai Health Experience Group provides. The Health Experience group is Dubai’s special health tourism institution. Also, the cardholders will be allowed to choose from a wide range of medical services. A visa will provide features enabling medical tourists to book medical appointments and sort their travel plans.
The agreement will be implemented across two phases. The first phase will provide healthcare discounts to Kuwaiti Visa cardholders. However, the discounts will only apply to medical services provided by six hospitals in the UAE. The clinics are Al Zahra Hospital, Burjeel Hospital, Adam Vital Hospital, King’s College Hospital, Sulaiman Al Habib Hospital, and Neuro Spinal Hospital. However, the second phase involves a much broader coverage.
According to reports, the second phase of the collaboration will provide Visa cardholders from other countries with discounts on healthcare services of all clinics affiliated with the Dubai Health Experience Group. The program will also collaborate with airlines and travel agents to provide specialised travel offers for prospective health tourists.
According to Dr Marwan Al Mulla, CEO of the Dubai Health Authority, the Visa-DHA collaboration is part of the DHA’s continuous efforts to enhance Dubai’s competitiveness in the health sector and strengthen strategic partnerships to achieve this competitiveness.
What to Expect From the MOU with Visa
Over the years, Dubai has boosted its health sector to increase health tourism. This goal is one of the Emirate’s plans to diversify the Dubai economy. The strategic collaboration between Visa and the DHA is expected to help establish Dubai as a global health service provider.
According to Dr Al-Mulla, Dubai has previously adopted programs that have produced impressive results in its health sector. The DHA CEO stated that these programs helped contribute over 630,000 international health tourists to Dubai’s health sector. He also stated that the influx of health tourists contributed about Dh730 million to Dubai’s economy. With these previous results, the DHA has emphasized its high hopes for its collaboration with Visa.
Conclusion
Many countries have strengthened their economic metrics through healthcare tourism. India has consistently derived significant revenue from its healthcare sector through the numerous healthcare tourists visiting the country each year. Dubai expects this collaboration with Visa to expand the Emirate’s health tourism significantly.
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Last Updated on 10 months by News Editor
