Private accommodation: strategic ally of medical tourism in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality

Abstract

Every year thousands of tourists travel abroad for health reasons, due to the lack of medical insurance, seeking quality treatments and saving costs and waiting time to access the procedures. Cuba develops a medical tourism program, through the Cuban Medical Services Company. From a pedagogical work, private accommodation landlords could be trained with basic principles of health tourism in promotion matters, as they represent a considerable part of Cuban tourist accommodation. A descriptive cross-sectional study was developed with a sample of 206 landlords from the Plaza de la Revolution municipality registered with the Municipal Labor Office. The survey applied showed that there is a predominance of women over 50 years of age and of people with a high level of education but with limited work experience in the tourism sector. There are gaps associated with the information of landlords about medical tourism in Cuba. High availability of this sector was identified in joining the program. They must have updated information on accredited health units for tourist care and short training courses.