Kos Plans to Become a Health Tourism Destination
The Municipality of Kos has taken active steps to position the island as an active health tourism destination. The move makes sense since this is the birthplace of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine.”
During the 2nd International Conference on Health Tourism, organized and sponsored by KEDE – the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece – which took place on Kos earlier this year (June 23-24), Giorgos Kyritsis, the mayor of the island, announced a new project to position Kos as a health tourism destination.
The new program, named Kos 2023, is designed to attract health-oriented tourists with the creation of a cluster “that will merge Greek health units and clinics interested in offering health travel services to medical and wellness tourists of the world,” according to Greek Travel Pages. The program, suggestively titled the “Hippocrates Cluster,” aims to attract to Greece more than 100,000 medical and wellness travelers annually. Part of the program, the island will continue to focus on medical congress tourism, but also will launch a new brand identity designed to portray Kos as the birthplace of Hippocrates.
Furthermore, the Municipality of Kos plans large-scale investments to develop Empros Thermi, Kos’s healing waters to allow, among other modern features, access to the Thermes to people with disabilities.
“We expect great interest from hotels, hospitality, and transportation professionals,” mayor Giorgos Kyritsis added, cited by GTP.
Kos has immense potential to attract tourists interested in health services of all kinds, but also to organize more health and medical conferences right where the foundations of this discipline were set by Hippocrates. Besides medical services, tourists can also visit all the Hippocratic sites, getting to know the island’s fascinating history and connection to the development of modern medicine, but also enjoying nature, culture, and entertainment.
GDP also reports that the Municipality of Kos “is also planning to create a one-stop shop “to facilitate enterprises that wish to invest in health tourism infrastructure and services.”