Travel Behaviour Risk Index
What really goes wrong on holiday?
The Travel Behaviour Risk Index is Safer Tourism Foundation’s annual analysis of how and why travellers encounter risk while on holiday. It combines real-world data with traveller insight to provide a “state of the nation” view of safety in travel.
Each year, we analyse an extensive dataset of aggregated and anonymised incident reports from UK travel operators and holiday providers, representing more than ten million trips taken by UK travellers annually. This provides a unique, evidence-based picture of the incidents and trends that most affect traveller wellbeing abroad.
To complement this, we conduct biannual research with 2,000 UK travellers, exploring attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours relating to risk and safety. This dual approach allows us to understand not only what goes wrong on holiday, but also how travellers think and act when it comes to preventing harm.
The findings from both data sources are brought together in the Travel Behaviour Risk Index, which tracks year-on-year changes, highlights emerging risks, and provides insight for the travel industry on where prevention efforts can have the greatest impact.
By making this analysis publicly available, Safer Tourism Foundation aims to build awareness, improve standards, and inspire collective action to make travel safer for everyone.
Travel Risk 2025 Focus Areas
1. The 2025 Travel Safety Landscape
Travellers say they are prioritising safety when choosing where to go, but that focus fades once the holiday is booked. At the same time, incidents are rising, reflecting a higher likelihood of getting into difficulty while abroad.
2. The Confidence Paradox – Holiday Head 2.0?
Travellers feel confident and well-prepared, yet the data tells a different story. From heat illness to falls and gastric issues, optimism bias continues to drive preventable incidents.
3. The New Risk Horizon
A warmer climate, an ageing traveller population, and evolving behaviour are reshaping the nature of risk. Health, environment, and behaviour now interact in ways that create new challenges for safety management.
4. Emerging Risk Areas and Behavioural Blind Spots
Rising reports of sexual harassment, mental-health incidents, and food allergies highlight new vulnerabilities. At the same time, under-disclosed health conditions and overconfidence around e-bikes and ocean swimming expose unseen risks.
5. Gender and Safety
Less than half of women feel confident travelling alone, and reports of harassment continue to rise. This section previews Safer Tourism’s upcoming Female Traveller Safety Report.
6. Today’s Evolving and Responsive Travel Industry
Travel providers are responding. Through the Safer Tourism Pledge, partners are sharing data, raising standards, and acting on evidence — from installing CO alarms to reducing bike accidents and falls.
7. The Continued Importance of a Proactive Safety Culture
The Index highlights where risks are rising and how behaviour must change. Safer Tourism invites operators, insurers, and data partners to join the Pledge and help make travel safer for all.
The 2025 Travel Landscape
Safety has moved from a background concern to an active decision driver. Safety and security have risen sharply in destination-choice priorities. The level of safety and security of the destination increased in priority by 21% year over year amongst travellers. While cost remains the top factor overall, more respondents than ever (92% this year vs 88% last year) say risk and safety concerns are important when selecting a destination and choosing a holiday type (89% this year vs 84% last year).
At the same time, recorded incidents increased by 15% overall, and the likelihood of a UK traveller experiencing an incident rose from 1 in 263 to 1 in 217. This contradiction – theoretically heightened awareness yet marked rise in incident likelihood – reflects one of the core insights of the 2025 Index; that traveller confidence doesn’t necessarily correlate with the real risk in travel.
“As the holiday planning moves from macro (where shall I go?) to micro (what shall I book for the Tuesday afternoon?), travellers’ safety concerns fade. It could be interpreted as, once the destination has been chosen, we assume the key safety decision has been made and switch off a bit more as they dig down into the detail of their holiday.””
The Confidence Paradox: Holiday Head 2.0
The data shows that travellers still demonstrate significant optimism bias, as the Holiday Head continues to play a significant role in travel risk thinking and behaviour.
While the vast majority of travellers saying safety is important to them, one in three UK travellers still travel without insurance. And the reason? They do not believe they’ll need it.
This despite the fact that a significant number of travellers* encounters safety challenges or health issues while on holiday:
Two in five travellers (39%) have suffered from a heat related incident
One in three travellers (32%) report experiencing an illness that required in destination medical attention
One in four travellers (26%) have experienced an injury requiring treatment
One in five travellers (22%) reported feeling out of their depth or experiencing a mismatch between their physical capabilities and the activity they were doing
And an alarming one in 10 (9%) of travellers say they or someone they were travelling with experienced a food allergy abroad - an increase of 29% since last year
Analysis of the Safer Tourism data mirrors what travellers report, with gastric related illnesses and slips & falls making up the majority of incidents recorded (39% and 16% of all reported incidents respectively).
But it’s the less common incidents - allergic reactions to food, being out of depth physically or getting into trouble in the water - that are the biggest cause for concern. And where it’s vital to have suitable travel insurance!
*Travellers reporting incidents for themselves or someone they were travelling with
The New Risk Horizon
A warmer, older, more complex travel landscape reshaping the way risk shows up for UK travellers
The 2025 data shows that today’s holiday risks are not “new”—but they are happening to new people, in new ways, and under new conditions. Three major forces are reshaping the risk environment: rising temperatures, an ageing traveller population, and the interaction between personal health conditions and travel contexts.
A warming world is now a mainstream travel safety issue
Heat is no longer an edge case.
1 in 4 UK travellers (25.4%) say they have personally experienced a heat-related incident abroad (Q22). Among them:
39% changed when they went outside
28.3% changed how they behaved outdoors
26.4% avoided specific activities
25.2% changed destination choices in future
Yet 30.1% made no adjustments at all, despite having already been affected
This clear behavioural split—between those who adapt and those who carry on unchanged—reinforces the scale of risk exposure during extreme heat events.
Ageing travellers face higher baseline vulnerability
Older travellers contribute significantly to UK outbound travel volumes, yet the data reveals:
Older respondents report higher levels of pre-existing medical conditions, amplifying risk during heat events or physically demanding activities.
Yet many of them admit they do not declare chronic conditions to their travel providers.
They are less likely to change behaviour after experiencing a safety issue compared with younger adults.
Severe incident types in operator data—such as falls, dehydration and heat stress—disproportionately involve older travellers.
Health meets environment: a potent risk multiplier
The combined data shows that travellers rarely disclose pre-existing conditions to operators or insurers.
But pre-existing conditions are strongly represented in multiple rising incident categories:
Heat-related illness
Gastric illness (39% of 2024 incidents)
Slips and falls (16% of 2024 incidents)
Mobility and cognitive impairment–related incidents
The risk isn’t simply environmental—it’s the intersection between individual health factors and specific holiday conditions. And it is accelerating faster than existing safety infrastructures.