Somewhere between a boat ride off a Greek island and a hormone injection, an American couple is quietly rewriting what a “baby-making trip” looks like.
They are not honeymooners chasing sunsets. They are IVF patients, and their itinerary includes doctor’s appointments alongside beach afternoons. Welcome to fertility tourism, a growing trend where couples treat conception like a destination holiday.
The couple who flew to Greece for a family
Emilie and Justin Solomon live in Florida. When they decided to try IVF, their local clinic quoted them close to $40,000 for a single round of treatment. Their insurance refused to cover it. On top of that, they were uneasy about how fertility laws in their state might change in the future.
So they looked outward. In Athens, they found a clinic offering the same treatment, including medication, fertilisation, embryo storage and the transfer itself, for about $12,000. That price did not include travel, but even with flights and hotels added, the gap was too big to ignore.
Their journey took two trips to Greece. During the first, Emilie went through ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. In between appointments, the couple explored the country, including a weekend on the island of Milos. Eventually, they went home with a baby boy.
Why the math doesn’t work at home
The Solomons are not an isolated case. A study released in July by Axene Health Partners and the Women’s Reproductive Health Foundation looked at insured Americans and found that a single IVF cycle now costs more than $29,000 on average. That number does not even cover the full picture.
Once genetic testing, embryo storage, pregnancy care and delivery are added, the total cost of having a baby through IVF can cross $54,000. And most patients don’t succeed on the first attempt. Doctors usually expect couples to go through two or three cycles before a pregnancy takes hold, which means the real bill for many families is far higher than any single number suggests.
Insurance in the US rarely helps. Fertility treatment is often excluded from coverage entirely, leaving couples to pay out of pocket for a process that can stretch across years.
Europe says: come on over
Clinics in Europe have noticed the shift, and they are actively welcoming American patients. Jakub Dejewski, who heads the European Fertility Society, has pointed to a sharp rise, more than 37 percent, in the number of Americans choosing to get treated in Europe over just the past year.
Spain has built a large network of fertility clinics with years of experience handling international patients. Greece has become popular for a slightly different reason. It offers treatment at a fraction of American prices while giving patients a Mediterranean setting to recover in between appointments. The Czech Republic, too, has developed into a major hub for reproductive medicine aimed specifically at patients travelling from abroad.
Beyond these three, destinations like North Cyprus and Denmark are also drawing couples who are willing to cross borders for a shot at parenthood.
Can a hospital visit really feel like a holiday?
There is something strange about turning a medical procedure into a vacation. IVF involves hormone injections, repeated blood tests, egg retrieval and, eventually, an embryo transfer, all scheduled tightly around a woman’s cycle. It is not something that pauses for sightseeing.
And yet, patients say the travel changes how the whole experience feels. Instead of spending weeks focused only on hospital visits and waiting rooms, some couples build in small breaks: a dinner in Athens, a walk through an old neighbourhood, or a few island days when their doctor says it’s safe.
For the Solomons, this meant that a process usually associated with stress and uncertainty was interrupted by moments that felt, for once, like an actual getaway.
What this trend really says
This is no longer a story about a handful of adventurous couples. It reflects a bigger, uncomfortable truth: for many Americans, becoming a parent through IVF is now cheaper and sometimes easier to plan abroad than at home.
When the cost difference between two countries is large enough to include flights, hotels, sightseeing and still come out ahead, more people will make that trip. And as more clinics in Europe build entire practices around foreign patients, this back-and-forth between hospitals and holidays may soon look less like an exception and more like the new normal for starting a family.
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