UK’s biggest tour operators signal support for Telegraph Travel’s family safety campaign
Britain’s biggest and most influential tour operators have signalled their support for Telegraph Travel’s family safety campaign by agreeing to share their data with an independent charity, bringing an end to the dangerous lack of understanding of how and why British children die abroad.
At the beginning of this year, Telegraph Travel launched a campaign to increase public awareness of the need for reliable figures on how many, and what sort of, accidents happen to children each year while on holiday. Prior to this, there was no government or independent database providing those numbers.
Since the Telegraph raised this issue in January, many leading holiday companies have agreed to share their accident statistics, and the Safer Tourism Foundation (STF) – a charity dedicated to the prevention of holiday accidents – has been able to produce the first industry-wide analysis of the types of incidents befalling families abroad.
Twenty-five companies have now agreed to share data relating to more than 12 million holidays every year. Following nine months of campaigning, we are pleased to reveal that this includes the three largest operators in Britain – TUI, Jet2 and Thomas Cook – as well as British Airways Holidays, Audley Travel, Expedia, Kuoni and Explore.
Welcoming the recent participation of Jet 2, Britain’s second-largest holiday company, Katherine Atkinson, chief executive of the STF, said that this had increased the charity’s collection of data by 20-25 per cent, and this broader range of incident reports brings greater clarity to the types of accidents that happen on holiday.
“Being able to pull together data from such a wide range of companies is brilliant because it allows us to extract the real story of what can go wrong for travellers; we used this data to shape our swimming pools campaign earlier on in the summer, highlighting a number of risks that pool users might not have thought of.”
If you missed it this summer, please read our pool safety guide (telegraph.co.uk/tt-pool-safety), in which we revealed the four hidden dangers of swimming pools.
A spokesman from Jet2 said: “We are fully committed to the aim of the Safer Tourism Foundation to improve the health and safety of holidaymakers, and we are very pleased to work with them in this crucial area.
“As a family friendly tour operator, the health and safety of every single customer is our absolute priority, and we particularly welcome the Foundation’s work highlighting to parents the importance of child safety on holiday, particularly around pools.”
Ms Atkinson added: “We are also seeing how valuable it is for companies providing very different holiday experiences to share ideas that help to make travel safer for all of us. We’re seeing conversations on travel safety happen between operators that have rarely met before. That’s really exciting and gives us the potential to do so much more in the future.”
The increased profile of the group’s work has benefited the travel industry. For example, after three young people in succession fell to their deaths from balconies at Eden Roc Apartments in Magaluf, Mallorca, the charity called for owners of the apartments to make immediate safety improvements or face a boycott by British holiday companies - and the property was quickly removed from websites including HomeAway and AirBnb.
More broadly, this fundamental shift in understanding about the incidents that befall families abroad means that we can identify the problems that occur on holidays - whether it’s water safety or facility maintenance - and determine where parents should be more vigilant and where accommodation providers need to take steps to improve safety inspections.
In coming months we will be reporting on more of the charity’s evidence-based projects to demand further transparency from operators and to help you and your families stay safe on holiday.
