There are countless reasons to choose one holiday destination over another. Culture, leisure & entertainment, food, etc. and now aesthetics has jumped on the bandwagon. Many people are now deciding to spend their holidays on getting a touch-up. The customer’s final choice is determined by the quality and price of the treatments, but as a general rule, they represent significant savings when compared to the patient’s country of origin.
South Korea has gained something of a reputation as a cosmetic surgery mecca; face lifts and facial contouring predominate, although many Asian tourists fly into South Korea for blepharoplasty, a treatment that reduces excess skin in the upper eyelids to make the eyes appear bigger and give a more ‘Western’ look. There are several clinics in Seoul offering these operations that can be complemented with leisure visits to the Sancheong Oriental Medicine Theme Park, which offers acupuncture and spa treatments. Needless to say, there is also a hotel industry around this service, with many places having accommodation options attached to the clinics so customers can go directly from the operating room to their hotel room after the operation to recover.
The case of South Korea is also interesting for another reason. A large number of tourists (mainly Chinese) have had problems when leaving the country as their new look bears little resemblance to the photo of their passport taken before the operation. So much so that clinics are now issuing cosmetic surgery certificates indicating the treatment performed and the length of the stay in the country.
In South America, there are also several countries offering a range of competitive services. In Colombia, for example, it’s quite common for visitors to avail of aesthetic packs that include shuttle service to and from the airport and laboratory analysis. An estimated 3% of tourists visiting the country do so for medical reasons, with buttock augmentation being the most in demand. One figure that’s explained by another: the price of this operation is 1/3 of what it costs in the US.
Brazil is another popular destination and occupies second position on the list of the world’s most sought-after locations for surgical procedures. Breast augmentation is the most in demand here, with 2.5 million operations of this type carried out in 2016 alone. Cosmetic surgery is viewed as a status symbol, and personal image is incredibly important with people seeing it as something perfectly normal and common process. Up to 15% of the world’s tummy tucks are carried out in Brazil.
The United States continues as the number 1 country on the list with a staggering 4.2 million aesthetic operation carried out in 2016, although it’s mostly Americans themselves getting the treatments. This is a public that generally speaking have greater purchasing power and don’t consider travelling abroad to save money.
We have to move further down the ranking to 12th position to find Spain in the annual report from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) regarding the number of qualified plastic surgeons (945), a figure that’s 1/5 of the number of professionals in Brazil and by 1/6 of those in the United States.
Regarding the tourist’s profile, women account for 84% of the cases, who are between 30 and 70 years old and opt for either an operation and stay the minimum length of time or stay longer in the country for tourism.
In light of the data, it’s clear that the age old saying “no pain, no gain” is more relevant today than ever before.
