Sun, sea and health – why you should offer a Travel Health and Vaccination Service this year
It has been a long time coming, but Brits are finally thinking about dusting off their passports and rummaging in the loft for their suitcases as they eagerly plan their 2022 holidays abroad.
According to a survey, more than £40 billion is likely to be spent on overseas trips and findings come from a poll of 2,000 people, which stated 2022 will be “a bumper year for travel”[1].
Although there are still some restrictions on where we are able to travel; June and July are expected to be the months Britons have their heart set on going abroad this year, with now being the perfect time to think about setting up and delivering a Travel Health and Vaccination Service.
By offering a Travel Health and Vaccination Service in your pharmacy, you can provide real benefits for both your customers and business. You can offer full travel health risk assessments, vaccinations, malaria prophylaxis and other supporting treatments in a full package. You will also help to expand your customer base and build loyalty through supporting your local community. You can be the go to destination for your communities’ travel health needs; where they may have struggled previously to get an appointment with their GP.
You can create an additional revenue stream for your pharmacy and although travel health requirements differ per traveller, we estimate that an annual gross profit of over £6,000 can be generated if offering a full Travel Health Service to one customer per month.
Providing a Travel Health and Vaccination Service, you’ll have an in-depth knowledge of immunisations, risks associated with specific destinations, and the implications of travelling with underlying conditions. When providing full health travel risk assessments, it isn’t just about vaccines, so you should also include:
- Bite prevention
- Sun protection
- Safe sex
- Standby treatments i.e. travellers’ diarrhoea, period delay
- Travel insurance
This will also give you the opportunity to increase sales of products related to the service.
We have resources and training available to ensure you set up and deliver a successful Travel Health and Vaccination Service. This includes downloadable SOPs, letters, guides and support packs. We also have a range of digital marketing you can use on your website and social media sites to drive awareness and promote your service.
Access the resources and guidance
We have partnered up with PharmaDoctor to offer over 60 oral and vaccination patient group directions (PGDs), to provide simple and cost effective solutions to enable your pharmacy to provide both private travel and non-travel services for the supply of specific prescription only medicines, without the need for your customers to visit their GP for a prescription.
Numark Information Services team are also on hand to offer advice for more complex travel queries such as travellers who take regular medications and will require chemoprophylaxis for their destination or travellers with interrupted vaccination schedules due to the COVID pandemic.
You can contact them on 0800 7835709 option 2.
[1] https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/tour-operators/brits-to-spend-40bn-on-overseas-holidays-in-2022