Russian-speaking interest in travelling to Thailand for medical and wellness treatment rose through the final quarter of 2025, ITIJ reported, citing search data compiled by the advertising firm Yango Ads. Medical-related search queries from Russian speakers were up 8 per cent year on year, the report said. Thailand now sits among the top three destinations those users search when looking for treatment abroad. The findings come from Yango Ads’ Medical Tourism Overseas report for the fourth quarter of 2025. They measure search interest rather than arrivals. That distinction is worth holding onto, because a query is a signal of intent and not a booked patient, and the data comes from an advertising platform with an interest in the trend it describes.
Wellness carries the numbers
Most of that interest sits in wellness rather than surgery, the report said. Searches for destination spa treatments rose 45 per cent on the year, ITIJ reported. They made up 67 per cent of all medical tourism queries from Russian-speaking users. That places Thailand’s spa and recovery offer, not its operating theatres, at the centre of the demand. Health diagnostics and dental treatment were the clinical categories searched most often, the kind of care that travellers fold into a holiday rather than fly out to receive. The pattern fits a market built on wellness first and clinical work second, and it rewards the resorts and spas more reliably than the hospitals.
A single source market
The picture is a familiar one for any destination that leans on a single country for its visitors. Thailand stayed the most searched destination in Southeast Asia among Russian speakers, the report said, ahead of Vietnam and Japan. Overall travel searches were up 10 per cent in the fourth quarter, after a 49 per cent jump the quarter before. Strength concentrated in one source market is also exposure, because the same Russian-speaking demand that lifts the figures is a demand Thailand does not control. It is tied to currencies, flight routes and politics well outside Bangkok. The 8 per cent rise in medical queries is real, but it is narrow, drawn from a single audience. Neighbouring destinations read the Russian market the same way. The risk of building on it is one Thailand has met before, when visitor numbers softened.
Where they go and how they book
The searches also show demand spreading beyond the established hubs. Phuket and Pattaya still drew the most interest, ITIJ reported. Searches for Chiang Mai rose 24 per cent and Krabi 16 per cent, which points to a market that no longer sits in only a handful of towns. Booking behaviour shifted as well. Villas made up 69 per cent of non-hotel accommodation searches, the report said, and 95 per cent of travel searches were for last-minute trips. That pattern leaves providers little notice and rewards flexible scheduling. A clinic that cannot fill a cancelled slot at short notice will struggle to turn that kind of demand into treated patients.
What operators should watch
Search data is the start of a booking, not the proof of one, and the figures that will matter are the ones that follow it. Neha Dawar of Yango Ads Thailand said “as competition intensifies, data-driven strategies are becoming essential.” The tests are whether the 8 per cent rise in medical queries turns into arrivals, whether the wellness share holds at two thirds of demand, and whether Thailand widens its source markets beyond Russian speakers before that demand shifts. A search is intent; a treated patient is revenue, and the two do not always move together.
