Turismo de Portugal, the Portuguese National Tourist Office, and the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce in the UK, hosted a major conference this week focusing on “Private Healthcare, Nursing Homes and Medical Tourism” in Portugal. The event highlighted opportunities for investing in health and wellness tourism in Portugal, as well as showcasing the products already on offer.

Health and wellbeing tourism has been on the rise across Europe, and is expected to increase by 5-10 percent by 2015. Portugal has been focusing its energy on developing its offering in this area, particularly by harnessing the potential of Madeira and the Azores islands and their natural beauty, as well as the thermal spring waters throughout Portugal mainland.

New specialist hotels such as the Longevity Wellness Resort in the Monchique Mountains of the Algarve, is the latest luxury hotel reinventing the way wellness tourism is being offered in Portugal. More than simply a spa, the Resort offers blood profiling, food intolerance analysis and can organise a series of personalised individually tailored ‘detox breaks’ focused on each visitor’s needs.

Nazir Sacoor, CEO of Longevity Wellness Resort in the Algarve, said: “Portugal offers a number of ideal conditions for health and wellness tourism. It is a safe country, with great weather all year round and fantastic infrastructure. Flight connections to Faro and Lisbon and Porto are frequent and reasonably priced, and English is widely spoken by locals.”

“Portugal is ideally placed to make the most of wellness and healthcare tourism. We see this as a growing segment of the market and are promoting this more and more in the UK,” said Miguel Perestrello, Director of Tourism for the Portuguese National Tourist Office in the UK.