In today’s internet age of travel bloggers and low-cost tickets, more and more Brits are seeking and getting access to the world.
However, these travels do not come without challenges.
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Year after year, popular destination spots find themselves ravaged by natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
In 2017, one of the top holiday destinations, Mexico City, suffered two earthquakes only weeks apart, resulting in the loss of almost 400 lives. In the summer of 2018, Greece was ravaged by wildfires that destroyed a tourist resort and killed more than 70 people. And in the fall of 2018, while enjoying a holiday in Mallorca, a British couple was killed by flash floods that swept through Sant Llorenç.
This doesn’t seem to have doused the English desire for travel, though. Last year, ABTA reported that up to 60% of British people travel for holidays, higher than any numbers seen since 2011. And just as they seem willing to risk disaster, these holiday travelers also seem willing to travel to locations with high terrorist risk, with bookings for locations like Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia going up in 2018, says the same ABTA report.
It doesn’t help that most of the countries suffering from natural disasters and terrorist attacks are also very poor. In Sulawesi, Indonesia, the national disaster agency confessed that their system set up to detect tsunamis had not functioned since 2012, causing their unpreparedness for the tsunami that hit in 2018. This brings up serious questions about government expenditure and funding. Still, with more than 360,000 British nationals that visited Indonesia last year, the number of British folk going there has doubled since 2010.
Given all the danger surrounding travel and the constant thirst for it, insurance agencies in the travel industry are creating more products to provide travelers with suitable cover to protect themselves if disaster strikes in the foreign land they find themselves in.
Smart travelers can purchase this policy and find cover by dialing a dedicated phone number wherever they are abroad, to get access to immediate assistance in the face of unexpected crisis. S-RM, a global security consultant with former military, enforcement, and intelligence personnel, provides this service.
In our current world, disaster and terrorism are no longer occasional happenings. These days, there is simply one disaster or crisis happening one after the other. But as the numbers have shown, the tourism industry is quite hardy. Many countries depend on the funds that tourists bring in, and so find the strength to get back up each time they are knocked down by disaster.
Also, British people do like to travel. And so, while there will always be a risk involved in exploring new holiday locations, minimizing that risk by purchasing good travel insurance will go a long way to give tranquility in the face of the unexpected.
