According to a report published last year by the Association of British Travel Agencies (ABTA), a lot more people are traveling to many foreign destinations for holidays. The number of people increased to 60%, which is the highest number since 2011. The destinations being visited surprisingly still include places that have experienced some form of terrorism or natural disaster in recent times.
Mexico, for example, was considered one of the top 10 most visited destinations. It experienced two deadly earthquakes that occurred just a few weeks apart. It left a lot of destruction in its wake, and more than 300 lives were lost.
Other parts of Europe, which used to be considered very safe from these disasters, are not so safe anymore. Another example, Greece, was hit by terrible wildfires causing the destruction of an entire holiday resort and 70 lives being lost.
Also, the large Majorca Island in Spain experienced a flash flood from very heavy rain which pretty much affected the entire town of Sant Lorenç.
A lot of these natural disasters have been blamed on climate change. However, climate change isn’t getting any better as most of the prone countries are still experiencing terrible situations. Regardless, this doesn’t seem to have deterred the travellers as they are still visiting these destinations in droves.
Silver Travel Advisor recently carried out a survey about people’s tolerance of places that have been known to be ravaged by terrorist attacks. The report from the survey showed that at least 63% of the participants have decided to strictly avoid places where certain terrorist attacks have taken place in the past.
However, regardless of the response from the survey, ABTA’s Holiday Trends Report from last year still showed that places including Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey had a large number of bookings from prospective travellers who still want to visit. This is regardless of the fact that the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel witnessed a terrorist attack that killed 38 people, 30 of whom were British tourists.
Indonesia is another example of a country that has experienced a recent national disaster. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the country specifically expressed that, “the capacity of the Indonesian emergency and rescue services to deal with large natural disasters is limited.” This happened after the Sulawesi Island was ravaged by a tsunami. The country’s national disaster agency was also forced to admit that since 2012, their underwater devices, specifically deployed for the purpose of identifying oncoming tsunamis, have not been working. Even with this, more than 300,000 British citizens still travelled to Indonesia over the last year, and this number seems to be increasing.
Problems like this have given birth to a specialist firm called Insure4Retirement. This firm works with different partners and collaborators to provide assistance and proper access to travellers abroad in the event of a disaster, whether natural or terrorist-borne. The insurance plan from https://insure4retirement.co.uk includes a dedicated phone number to specialists that immediately swing into action when called in an emergency.
Holidays are important, and many countries, among other things, rely on tourism. Sometimes, you might even have to travel for work and not pleasure. Whatever your reason for travelling – especially to a prone destination – talk to the good people at insure4retirement.co.uk to prepare you properly just in case.
