Iran and Turkey are the most popular destinations for cosmetic surgery and medical tourism procedures such as rhinoplasty in the West of Asia and the Middle East region, but these two countries have traveled different paths to reach this place.
Iran started to boom from 30 years ago and the last three decades have seen them go forward with persistent slow growth rates, whilst Turkey started actively promoting medical tourism around 2012 and have had amazing progress since then, causing them to eventually surpass Iran last year regarding the popularity of rhinoplasty on Google search engine results. As you can see in the diagram. the words “rhinoplasty in Turkey” has gotten more viral than “rhinoplasty in Iran” from 2018. Iran had a long history of rhinoplasty in the world but just in 6 years have been defeated by Turkish colleagues.
So why has this happened?
I would believe the several factors contributed towards this:
Turkey has introduced itself as popular tourist destination in the last decade so patients can enjoy the sights alongside surgery, but Iran has not been as popular in this field.
The media has a very important role in this success. Turkish surgeons capitalized on social media heavily to absorb more patients but Iranian colleagues couldn’t compete with them due to financial sanctions.
Infrastructure like hotels, airports and transportation is way better in Turkey than Iran which could be another factor.
Attractive package deals in Turkey could be another factor to attract patients
Finally I could mention that if Iran is going to progress in medical tourism they should invest in infrastructure and advertisement on social media more too.
