When Travel Goes Wrong
2022-2023 travel incident data analysis
As part of our mission to save lives and reduce preventable harm or injury to UK travellers, each year the Safer Tourism Foundation gathers and analyses traveller safety incident data. We do this with the help of the Safer Tourism Pledge partners: travel companies and operators who have committed to the highest standards of safety excellence, and who collaborate with each other, and with us as a charity, to prevent traveller harm.
We aggregate anonymised customer incident data from Safer Tourism Pledge partners with other evidence, including media reports, FCDO Consular intelligence and Coroners’ inquest findings. We analyse the data to identify the most significant incident types that harm UK citizens while they travel, including accidents, health concerns, and personal security incidents. This analysis enables us to identify patterns and trends in the incidents, and to look for root causes, which then helps us work on ways to prevent similar incidents and accidents in the future.
This data is critical to our work as a charity. It helps us concentrate our efforts, and those of our partners, on reducing the likelihood of future harm to travellers. Now, we want to share our insights from the 2022 aggregated data for others who value traveller safety and want to make a difference.
A few caveats.
Our dataset is large – it includes data from travel companies with a combined ATOL licence tally of nearly 7.5M. Even so, it still a relatively small fraction (10%) of the 71M+ outbound trips made in 2022 for leisure purposes or to visit family (according to the most recent ONS International Passenger Survey).
Our data is skewed towards travellers who book their trips directly with a travel operator, or an agent. For travellers who arrange their holidays independently the data is harder to collect; some people who suffer an accident abroad may claim through their insurance company, others will seek support through crowd funding sites, and some may just deal with it without reporting it to anyone.
Nonetheless, the data gives a good indication of incident types and trends. In 2022/3, several themes arose from our analysis.
High level insights from the data
The chance of an incident is incredibly low – of the 7M+ trips accounted for in the data, less than 1% reported any kind of incident to their travel company (0.38%)
Fatalities are extremely rare – less than 0.2% of reported incidents – and when they do occur, there are often underlying health conditions
Where incidents occur, it is often due to a mismatch between the type of trip / activity and the physical capabilities of the traveller
Slips, trips and falls are the most common incident types captured in the data, accounting for nearly one in five non Covid related incidents. They can happen anywhere but are more common in three kinds of settings
Allergic reactions, most often to food, are becoming of increasing concern to us and to many travel companies
Fatalities are rare, but seemingly minor incidents can seriously impact a travel experience
The 2022 dataset includes 45 fatalities; a few deaths were related to drugs and/or alcohol and some are attributed to what could be considered unforeseeable incidents. However, the majority of cases seem to be partially caused by pre-existing health conditions exacerbated by circumstances while travelling, such as the heat, water (pool or ocean), or exertion. Because our data is anonymised, we are not privy to information about the personal circumstances of the individuals who died, or whether any health conditions were known about beforehand. Yet the narrative around the incidents seems to suggest some travellers get into trouble because the activity they are doing or the type of trip they are on may not be a good match for their physical capabilities.
For sheer numbers, the catch-all category of “Slips, trips and falls” yields the most incidents and accidents for UK travellers, year after year, accounting for nearly 1 in 5 of all non-Covid related incidents. Some of the resulting injuries – to heads or limbs – can be very serious. This categorisation hides three clear risk areas where serious falls are more likely to occur, namely:
on wet surfaces (poolside, bathrooms, mopped tile floors);
in the dark (where it is an unfamiliar environment);
on steps or uneven ground, especially where the change in levels is unpredictable, such as on ancient stone steps, rocky paths or cobbles.
Two other specific incident types stood out in our 2022/23 dataset and were reported anecdotally by a range of Safer Tourism Pledge partner companies – food allergy-related incidents and bike accidents.
The data shows a rise in severe allergic reactions, which are occurring more frequently (or perhaps being reported more often) than prior to the pandemic. These potentially life-threatening allergic reactions are most commonly related to food but can also come from insect bites or other allergens. We’re also seeing a number of “near misses” where an allergic reaction was narrowly avoided.
We’re also seeing an increased proportion of bike accidents, particularly on group rides where there is a gravelly descent, where people are perhaps distracted by other riders or when they are attempting to reach their water bottle or adjust a piece of kit such as a GoPro.
How the Safer Tourism Foundation and our Pledge partners are responding to the findings
A big part of our remit is collaborating with the travel industry, sharing the key findings from the data and supporting operators to identify and address the root causes of the most common and severe incident types. In November of this year, Safter Tourism Pledge partners gathered to review the insights from the data, share best practices and work together to continue enhancing safety prevention in travel.
In our discussions with Safer Tourism Pledge partners, we explored how we might apply learnings and techniques from cognitive behavioural science to address and change behaviours that result in incidents on holidays. For example, we used the example of bike accidents on gravelly descents to work through the practical application of the COM-B model for behaviour change (this is the model developed by University College London and widely used across the UK government). There were several points in the system at which interventions could be made to encourage better use of brakes by bicycle users on gravelly descents.
“Bike accidents on gravelly descents” may feel like highly specified incident type, but in our experience, it is critical to draw a tight specification around an incident type if we are to analyse the root causes and explore behavioural science-informed solutions where relevant and appropriate. This highly targeted approach also enables us as a charity to develop targeted consumer-facing campaigns, working with industry, public sector and NGO partners to help keep travellers safe.
Severe food allergies have had much media interest in recent years with several fatalities in the UK resulting in fundamental changes within the food industry. The travel ecosystem is complex, with many risk points, particularly in supply chains in countries where food allergies are not so widely understood and where substitute ingredients are more likely to be allergenic. We are going to be following up this issue with Safer Tourism Pledge partners next year so explore how the risks can be further mitigated for customers who have life threatening allergies. After all, we want travel to be available to everyone.
We are also interested in how we can support travellers to research, select and purchase the right holiday or activity for them, and how travel companies and agents can help in this decision. As travellers we may sometimes believe we are fitter than we actually are; this could be an element of denial, or we simply have a condition that we don’t yet know about. Sometimes we may make assumptions about how strenuous an activity is likely to be, and we don’t always find out sufficient detail about the physical capability required when booking our trip.
Once we have booked a trip, the following period of anticipation before going on holiday can present an opportunity to prepare physically, giving us the best chance to have a wonderful, trouble-free trip. Many ski operators will suggest simple exercises to do before embarking on a week’s skiing (which for many of us is a bit of a shock after 51 weeks sitting behind a desk). We are less likely to consider exercising before a typical summer holiday, even if we plan to be physically active during our trip, but perhaps we should.
Addressing the ‘Holiday Head’
Optimism bias abounds on holidays – the idea that nothing bad will happen to us. At Safer Tourism, we’ve dubbed this mindset the ‘Holiday Head’. It can be a good thing – the sense of optimism and being outside of our normal routine makes us more likely to try things we wouldn’t usually at home, taste new foods, go on a hike, try a water sport for the first time. There’s a greater sense of adventure and openness. After all, you’re on ‘vacation’ from your normal life, and as the data shows, 99 times out of 100 you’ll have a great time! As demonstrated by Safer Tourism Pledge partners, the travel industry takes customer safety incredibly seriously.
But the ‘Holiday Head’ can also lead to people pushing their bodies beyond their limits, may contribute to them thinking they are more physically fit than they really are or inadvertently eating something they shouldn’t. We always encourage travellers to make sure they have the right travel insurance for them, so that if anything does go wrong, they are supported appropriately. That means declaring any health conditions that might otherwise invalidate a later claim. While there is sometimes a reluctance to be completely open due to cost implications and potential restrictions on travel plans, getting the right insurance is paramount.
Holidays are meant to be happy experiences, and travel companies work hard to deliver that. Our analysis of customer safety incident data shows that by taking a few extra precautions and being realistic about our capabilities, we as travellers can play our part in making sure our travel is trouble-free.