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Richard Turen
It is one of the most important questions a customer always asks.
“How safe is it to go there?”
We are bombarded with news every hour and every day. We understand that the world is not always a safe place.
This continent of ours is relatively isolated, and most of us never leave it. Most of us cannot have a passport. We here in America think it’s not worth the risk to visit places that are less safe than our lives.
Information about the relative safety of countries around the world comes in the form of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks countries on a complex score including social safety and security, ongoing domestic and international conflicts, and status. internal militancy.
The GPI safety rankings should not be confused with the World Happiness Report, which I will cover in a future column. The annual security report is not about living standards; It’s entirely about the main question our customers ask us: “How safe is it compared to this?”
No wonder it’s the safest place you can go. According to the GPI, for the past decade, Iceland has been the safest country in the world. There isn’t a single McDonald’s in the country, I can’t confirm the connection. But here’s a potentially important fact: Iceland is the most gender-equal country on earth, according to the World Economic Forum.
The second safest country on earth is New Zealand. Ireland, Denmark and Austria follow. Kind of predictable, I guess. But then the seventh and eighth safest countries are Slovenia and the Czech Republic, ninth and 10th, respectively, Singapore — I believe crime is illegal — and Japan, where crime is considered polite.
You may have noticed that seven of the 10 safest countries according to the GPI are in Europe, so it might be wise to become a European specialist going forward. We now have a great group of tourist-friendly, fun, beautiful and “safest places in the world” to recommend to our customers.
“Where will I be most safe?” There is certainly an answer to that question. But you may have noticed one country missing from this discussion: Where does the US rank in the new GPI rankings?
In fact, we made the list — ranking 129th behind Azerbaijan and ahead of Brazil.
Now, we all know that statistics can be interpreted and overturned, and we could end up in 117th place because of some accounting error. But the reality is that our safety score puts us at the bottom of global rankings, which means that US visitors — as well as current residents — are walking down the street and locking their doors at night around 128 around the world, then they’re here.
It can be a wonderful new business model if you think about it: “Our agency only sends guests from the United States to countries that are statistically reliable.”
But we need to work on educating customers new to international leisure travel about safety facts. Most of the time, no matter where you go overseas, as soon as your plane takes off and the seat belt sign goes off, your life expectancy increases slightly.
We cannot escape reality. We have a realistic view of the relative safety of each of our clients when traveling overseas.
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