Know Before You Go

Holiday Extras launches brand-new ‘destination risk checker’ to help travellers navigate the complex travel landscape this summer

 With the summer holiday season fast approaching, sun seekers planning their trips are facing an unprecedented volume of warnings as uncertainty caused by conflict in the Middle East converge with familiar seasonal risks to create a travel landscape that seems more complex than ever.

Yet while on paper the noise about dangers and disruptions can feel overwhelming, the vast majority of travel plans go without hitch, and concerns can be quelled with a little bit of planning. That’s why Holiday Extras – the UK’s market leader of holiday extras including airport parking, airport hotels, airport lounges and more – has created a planning tool that combines live data from the FCDO with seasonal risk patterns to assess the risk level associated with your destination. 

Aptly named Know Before You Go, the interactive tool draws on four risk signals used by experienced travellers, security professionals, and analysts that brief government travel advisories – political instability, crime and security, health risk, and natural disaster exposure – and weights them against the current FCDO advisory level for each country. 

Designed to be a useful starting point for holiday research, destinations are scored and presented alongside a seasonal layer that illustrates how disruption patterns typically shift throughout the year, allowing travellers to understand whether they’re heading into a peak ‘risk window’, or a quieter one. 

Making understanding risk levels hassle-free, the tool is the first of seven steps the travel brand recommends when planning your escape – which include checking the FCDO’s current live advice before travelling, making sure you purchase and understand your travel insurance, as well as knowing where your essential documents are should anything unexpected happen. 

Seamus McCauley, Head of Public Affairs at Holiday Extras, said: 

“Travel is one of the most enriching things you can do with your time and money. It is, for the overwhelming majority of people, extraordinarily safe. 

“While conflict in the Middle East and perennial risks are genuine concerns, they won’t impact travel plans for most of us – but the relentless news cycle and headlines, paired with the way our perception of risk is calibrated, may nevertheless prompt some of us to opt out and miss an opportunity to jet off.

“There is no way to remove all risk or stop disruption completely, but this tool has been designed to put minds at ease and make it easy for travellers to assess the risk level of the destinations they’re considering.”

For more information and to use the Know Before You Go tool, visit: www.holidayextras.com/know-before-you-go.html. visit: www.holidayextras.com/know-before-you-go.html.