Dental team fills gap in tourism market

Cumbria’s tourist board has announced another attraction to woo visitors – a trip to the dentists.

Cumbria Tourism believes it is the first regional tourist board in Britain to have signed up a dental practice into its membership of 2,300 businesses.

Now Grange Dental Practice, of Grange-over-Sands, South Cumbria, will be listed among the hotels, caravan parks and visitor attractions which pull over 15 million tourists to the county each year.

Practice partner Chloe Booth says that Grange Dental Practice is responding to an increasing demand from patients who combine Cumbria’s wide-open spaces with a chance to open wide.

Some, she says, are driven by necessity because the dental practices where they live are either not taking on any more patients, or hold out the prospect of lengthy waits for an appointment.

Others, however, simply find it difficult to fit a visit to the dentist into their working week, and so combine a short holiday with a long put-off decision to get their teeth put to rights.

‘As dental tourism now seems to be something of a trend, we decided to show our willingness to help clients by becoming a member of the tourist board,’ said Chloe, whose father and brother are both practitioners at the practice.

‘A number of hotels and holiday parks have offered to give discounts to people coming up for treatment, so we will soon be offering special dental breaks on our website,’ she added.

Chloe says that her practice will arrange appointments to coincide with the stay, and can carry out a number of different procedures, normally requiring a series of visits, in a single session.

Although some patients come for routine treatments such as fillings, others use their dental away-days for implants, bridgework and complete cosmetic dental makeovers.

‘We have people coming from as far away as London, Wales and Cornwall for appointments, and they say it’s a far less stressful experience when the treatment is combined with an escape from daily pressures,’ she said.

Grange Dental Practice, based in Yewbarrow Terrace in Grange, was opened two years ago by Dr Mike Booth, who has been in practice for over 30 years, and who also provides a family dental service in South Cumbria.

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