Travellers are put off by political unrest, not cost

POLITICAL unrest and poor resort reviews are more likely to deter Britons from travelling than the cost of holidays, according to a survey.

Reports of riots in overseas destinations topped the list of factors that would put UK travellers off, the poll by foreign exchange company Caxton FX found.

The next most-popular reasons to avoid a particular holiday were seeing poor feedback about the destination online and hearing bad reports from friends or family.

These outweighed the cost of flights as a deterrent, with those aged 55 or over most concerned about political unrest.

The survey of more than 2,000 holidaymakers showed that those aged 25 to 44 were most influenced by travel review websites such as TripAdvisor, with 33 per cent in this age group saying they would avoid certain places if they read bad reports online.

Only 21 per cent of 18-24-year-olds were influenced by holiday reports from their family, compared with 38 per cent of 45 to 54-year-olds who took heed of what their relatives thought about trips.