A significant proportion of Australians ignore negative travel advisories on destinations, a survey shows, but a crisis specialist says there will always be those who view the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) as a bit of a “worrying nanny”.
In a survey published recently by Lastminute.com.au, almost a quarter of respondents admitted to having ignored a major negative travel advisory warning related to either terrorism, political violence, weather or health. The top five most visited destinations during a travel warning were Indonesia, Thailand, Bali, Israel and Fiji.
In the poll of 3000 respondents, 27 per cent who ignored a warning did so just for the “thrill and excitement” of it, 23 per cent did so to visit friends and family, while 17 per cent took the plunge in order to do business.
Lastminute.com.au chief operating officer Chris Meehan said most travellers were conscious of the conditions in the destination they planned to visit. “They make their decision based around assessing the warnings for the destination,” he said.
The survey, part of Lastminute.com.au’s Travel and Lifestyle Trends Report, showed 29 per cent of males had flown to a dangerous destination, compared to 18 per cent of women.
Crisis specialist David Beirman says that some travellers think DFAT is like a “worrying nanny” on the safety front and that it makes situations out to be worse than they are. Young people were especially likely to take travel risks, he said. But DFAT had to err on the side of caution, lest they be blamed if something happened, such as the Bali bombings of 2002, he added.
Agents naturally had to inform their clients about negative travel advisories on countries they were planning on visiting, but in the end, it was an advisory and not an order. But agents needed to ensure that clients planning trips to countries with negative advisories had adequate insurance cover, because insurance companies did not always provide cover for incidents such as terrorist violence.