Katherine Atkinson, chief executive of Safer Tourism Foundation, responds to findings from the 2024 WTM Global Travel trends report, pointing to a rise in perceived higher risk tolerance among travellers
Worrying about the wrong things is a trap into which both travellers and travel companies can fall.
The 2024 global trends report released at this year’s World Travel Market shows that travellers are more willing to take part in higher risk activities in their search for adventure. Intuitively it would make sense for high-risk activities to take up more of our attention, because the outcomes can be severe if something goes wrong.
The assumption is that “hard adventure” activities such as skydiving, whitewater rafting or wildlife viewing present more of a risk to travellers than more familiar “soft adventure” activities such as hiking or cycling.
This oversimplifies travel risk and traveller risk behaviours. It also reflects the human inclination to concentrate on the outcomes of a hazard, rather than the likelihood of it happening. As a species we are not very good at judging probability.
At Safer Tourism we collect anonymised safety incident data from a range of UK based travel companies, and our 2023 dataset reflected 10.6m journeys.
There isn’t a single skydiving or whitewater rafting incident amongst the 40,000+ incidents logged within that dataset.
There are, however, many hundreds of injuries sustained by people on bicycles or on foot and some of these are incredibly serious. Most traveller fatalities occur in situations that might seem relatively mundane – going for a swim, for example – and most of the worst injuries happen when people are doing things that they typically do regularly at home, like walking.
This is partly a numbers game – more people cycle or hike on holiday than go skydiving. But it is also about supplier management and traveller behaviour.
Travel companies are acutely aware of the inherent dangers of some of these high-octane activities and therefore pay special attention when assessing suppliers of these activities, only contracting (and selling) when they feel confident about the risk management systems in place.
And then there is the Holiday Head, the propensity for travellers to behave on holiday in ways they wouldn’t do at home. Our Holiday Head encourages us to take risks when travelling we wouldn’t usually contemplate, and it means we underplay risks that we would usually try to mitigate.
I cycle at home, so why is cycling on holiday any different? Well it is. Different bike, unknown terrain, lots of distractions, perhaps hotter weather, and that wonderful carefree holiday feeling. So maybe I whizz down the hills with more abandon (our data shows the vast majority of cycling accidents take place on descents).
At home I know where the cycling risks are – impatient drivers, disappearing cycle lanes, that dangerous junction. On holiday it’s all new.
On top of that many of us want to do more challenging activities as part of our travel experience. Our consumer research shows that one fifth of travellers seek a bike ride or hike on holiday that is more difficult than they would usually do at home.
At an international conference last year one member of the audience stood up and asked, in a rather accusatory manner, ‘Are you saying that I should never go scuba diving again on holiday because it’s high risk?’
Not at all. At Safer Tourism we worry much more about the day to day accidents that befall travellers, because that’s where most harm occurs, even if it is less newsworthy. Travel risk is hiding in plain sight.