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FCO Travel Advice Safe and Sound?

Following lobbying by Tourism Concern, the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office established a permanent multi-stakeholder panel to ensure that destinations are not adversely affected by unnecessarily prolonged or geographically far-reaching travel advisories.

The UK Foreign Office produces travel advisories for over 200 countries with approximately 250,000 visits to their website per week. When the Foreign Office advises against ‘all non-essential travel’ to a holiday destination, the public, tour operators, travel associations and businesses take notice. Even insurance companies pay attention and travel advisories are used as a benchmark for whether they insure our holidays or not.

Foreign Office Travel Advice is believed to be a fair representation of information on these countries. However, our campaign – Foreign Office Travel Advice: Safe and Sound? – highlighted many major inconsistencies.

Indonesia and the USA both suffered horrific terrorist attacks in 2002, but the resulting UK travel advice could not have been more different. Indonesia received a blanket ban on ‘all non-essential travel’ due to the bombing incident in Bali, but the FCO only advised ‘vigilance’ to the USA, with the media actively promoting tourism to the country. The same travel restrictions continued to be imposed on Indonesia throughout 2003 and into 2004 and its tourism industry was devastated by the drastic reduction in visitors. Bali suffered an average income decline of 43% and its sales revenues plummeted by 71% - 31% of schools reporting students dropping out during 2003 as a consequence.

Tourism Concern’s Campaign

To put forward our case, we produced a report in October 2003, FCO travel advisories: the case for transparency and balance, identifying the stark contrasts within Foreign Office travel advisories on a number of destinations. As part of the FCO review on travel advisories, Tourism Concern set up an international consultation group to work with partners with a stake in travel advisories. We arranged a meeting of international and UK based travel associations in the form of an Advisory Council. This was designed as a permanent, practical structure to aid the FCO in making these difficult and life-changing decisions. Travel advisories would then be consultative, balanced and those affected would get their say. And it’s worked! The Foreign Office held their first Travel Advice Review Group meeting in November 2004 at which we were present. They will continue to have these meetings every 3 months to review their Travel Advisories.