What a health tourism agency does: facilitator vs. agency
What does a health tourism agency do, how do licensed health tourism facilitators differ from a marketing agency, and which should a clinic work with, for what?
By Roozbeh Nazari · CEO
The phrase health tourism agency is used in Türkiye to describe two different businesses, and the confusion costs clinics dearly. In the first sense, the "agency" is the intermediary that finds the patient, organises travel and accommodation and refers them to the clinic; in the regulation's wording an international health tourism intermediary organisation, in everyday language a health tourism facilitator or travel agency. In the second sense, the "agency" is the marketing and consulting agency that enables the clinic to find patients under its own name: SEO, advertising, content, website, conversion measurement. The two have different legal status, different revenue models and different risk profiles. This article explains what each does, where they overlap and which one a clinic should work with, for what; without commission rates or market-size figures, because those vary by contract and have no official public source.
Health tourism facilitators: the intermediary organisation with a licence
Bringing international patients as an intermediary is not an unregulated business in Türkiye. The Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health ties operating as an intermediary organisation to an authorisation certificate; the Ministry of Health's HealthTürkiye portal describes authorised agencies as Group A travel agencies authorised by the Ministry and TÜRSAB, and states that these agencies are authorised to provide accommodation, transport and transfer services to international health tourists, their companions and relatives. Among the conditions the regulation requires are a Group A travel agency operating licence, signed protocols with authorised health facilities, and a multilingual call centre and website; we recommend confirming the current text and application requirements on USHAŞ's legislation page. In practice a health tourism facilitator does the following: finds patient candidates in the source country (its own advertising, field representatives, partners), holds the preliminary conversation, relays the clinic's medical opinion to the patient, sets up travel, accommodation and transfers, accompanies the patient while in Türkiye, and refers the patient to the clinic for the fee written in the contract. For the clinic this model delivers fast patient flow; the price is that the patient is the facilitator's customer, the clinic's brand reaches the patient late, and the flow depends on the facilitator's priorities. Working with an intermediary that has no licence exposes the clinic too under the regulation; the lists of authorised organisations are published through the Health Tourism Department and HealthTürkiye.
Health tourism consulting and the marketing agency: the clinic's own channel
The agency in the second sense does not bring patients; it builds the channels through which the clinic finds patients. This work has four parts. First, visibility: organic search and AI search visibility in the target countries, target languages and target queries; separate demand maps and separate pages for Arabic, Persian, English and Turkish. Second, demand creation and capture: Google Ads and Meta campaigns built within healthcare restrictions. Third, conversion: website, WhatsApp and form flows, the patient coordinator's CRM, source-to-appointment attribution. Fourth, compliance: content that complies with Türkiye's health promotion regulation; red lines on outcome promises, before/after use and patient reviews. A health tourism consulting service sets up the strategy and measurement of these four parts; execution can sit with the clinic's team or the agency. In this model the patient is the clinic's customer, the brand speaks to the patient directly and the channel accumulates for the clinic; the price is that results arrive later and the clinic has to build in-house patient coordination capacity. We built our services for clinics in exactly this second sense: we do not bring patients, we build the clinic's own patient source and measure it. Our medical content compliant with health promotion regulation article covers the compliance part in detail.
Facilitator vs. agency: a comparison on five questions
Whose customer is the patient: the facilitator's in the facilitator model, the clinic's in the agency model. Revenue model: the facilitator works on a per-patient fee, the agency on a monthly retainer or project fee; the per-patient fee grows with volume, the retainer does not. Legal status: the facilitator holds a licence and is supervised under the regulation; the marketing agency does not take a licence because it provides no health service, but the content and advertising it produces are subject to health promotion regulation. Accumulation: when the facilitator relationship ends, patient flow ends; the site, content and data the agency built stay with the clinic. Risk: dependency and brand invisibility with the facilitator, payback time of the investment with the agency. These five questions answer not "which is better" but "which one, for what". A newly opened clinic that wants fast patient flow can start with a licensed facilitator and build its own channel in parallel; a clinic that has depended on a single facilitator for years and enters fee negotiations without its own channel has only one card left: price.
The clinic's decision framework: running both models together
Instead of seeing the two models as rivals, treating them as two entrances to the same funnel is the healthiest structure we observe. It has four conditions. First, a single patient record: patients from the facilitator and from your own channel must sit in the same CRM with their source marked; otherwise you never know which channel actually works. Second, an overlap rule: the contract must state that a patient who came from your own advertising is not subject to the facilitator's fee. Third, brand control: content and advertising the facilitator publishes in your clinic's name bind you too under health promotion regulation; the approval process must be in the contract. Fourth, an exit plan: a target for what share of patient flow should come from your own channel when the facilitator relationship ends must be the KPI of the work done with the agency. The ten criteria in our choosing a health tourism advertising agency article are used when choosing the agency in the second sense; when choosing the facilitator in the first sense, the first and non-negotiable criterion is that its licence appears in the official list.
Frequently asked questions when choosing a health tourism agency
Can one health tourism agency be both a facilitator and a marketing agency? It can; a licensed facilitator may also sell marketing services to the clinic. In that case the contract must state the fee and scope of the two jobs separately and make clear that patients from your own channel are not subject to the facilitator's fee. Can a clinic set up its own facilitator? Under the regulation it requires a separate company and a licence; do not decide without legal advice. Can a health tourism agency be abroad? Partners in the source country are common; but the organisation carrying out intermediary activity in Türkiye must hold a licence, and the foreign partner's counterpart in Türkiye is that organisation. Is healthcare experience essential for the agency? For the marketing agency, yes, because health promotion regulation, YMYL quality expectations and the healthcare policies of ad platforms cannot be learned from general marketing knowledge. Last question: which should you start with? A clinic with urgent cash-flow needs starts with a licensed facilitator, a clinic that wants to build a brand starts with its own channel; running both together, when possible, gives the healthiest result.