What’s on your mind when you hit the road?
What are you afraid of when you travel? Crisis-response firm Global Rescue took a stab at finding out with their 2019 Travel Safety Survey. They polled 900 current and former clients in the United States and found out that 90 percent of those travelers are fearful about their safety while traveling (while a shocking 10 percent weren’t afraid of anything at all). Here’s what most of the respondents were afraid of, ranked from most-afraid to least-afraid.
What We’re Afraid Of
The travel safety threat that most people are afraid of? “Crime.” A whopping 69 percent of travelers said that was their biggest safety concern while traveling, followed closely by health and medical issues which concerned 67 percent Surprisingly, despite several acts of terrorism around the world this year (not to mention this week alone) only 41 percent of travelers listed terrorism as their biggest fear when going abroad.
However, we are slightly more concerned about travel safety this year than we were last year. In 2018, just 84 percent of participants had travel safety concerned, so we’re up 3 percent. But, we’re not doing any more research to find out what safety issues we’ll encounter on our trips. Just 48 percent say they will do more research, 30 percent will do absolutely none at all, and 25 percent will at least prepare themselves a little bit.
Recommended Fodor’s Video
Where We’re Afraid to Go
In 2019, most respondents are afraid to go to Africa (87 percent), followed by the Middle East (84 percent), South America (80 percent) and Asia (74 percent). But it’s not all about travel jitters. People are less afraid of traveling to Europe. This year, more than half of respondents (54 percent) said they planned to travel across the pond. Last year, 74 percent said they were concerned about traveling over.
Global Rescue CEO and founder Dan Richards commented, “This year’s results are reflective of a relative decline in the worldwide threat of terrorism, particularly in Europe and Turkey, where attacks in previous years likely influenced the perception that terrorism was a major concern,”
A Special Message to the 10 Percent of People Who Aren’t Concerned
Everyone should take some sort of care as to researching a place before they travel to it—not doing so is, honestly, straight up irresponsible. Educating yourself is imperative. Regardless of where you’re going, you should be at least moderately concerned about travel safety, because staying alive is by far the most important feature of any trip–whether it’s in one of these “more feared” regions, or not.
Before you make plans, do yourself a favor and do some Googling, check out the state department’s travel warnings, or scroll through the 2019 Fodor’s No List to see our recommendations for places you might want to skip when you’re traveling this year.