68 July 2016 - Business View Caribbean
compete with other markets like Costa Rica or India,
even though the cost of doing business is higher in the
Bahamas than those places.
And when the prices can’t be equal, he said, the menu
of services have to be unique, which is what prompted
the aforementioned focus on stem cells, cochlear im-
plants and spine surgeries, as well as fecal microbiota
transplant – a procedure whose purpose is to replace
good bacteria that’s been killed or suppressed by the
use of antibiotics, resulting in infection by an overpop-
ulation of bad bacteria.
“We can provide pricing that’s 35 to 40 percent less
than the U.S. average, so that’s kind of the niche we
got into,” Rassin said. “That isn’t necessarily where
the big activity is in medical tourism, which is why we
need particular niche treatment areas that we’re go-
ing to go after that aren’t necessarily the cheapest,
but may be unique to us.”
Rassin’s bottom-line objective is to enhance the in-
ternational traffic to 50 percent of overall system rev-
enues, which is a significant jump from the 18 percent
share it accounts for now.
He conceded, though, that a bump to even 25 or 30
percent would be fiscally considerable.
The primary target markets for medical tourism visitors
remain the United States, Canada and other Caribbe-
an island nations, though China provides an intriguing
possibility going forward thanks to Chinese ownership
of a large local hotel under construction that Rassin
believes will ultimately help raise the Bahamian profile
in the world’s most populous country.
“You have to say (50 percent) is optimistic because it
is just a budgeted figure,” he said. “But I believe it is
realistic that we could increase, once we get the (fecal
microbiota transplant) program going and the stem
