What we fear losing: Partner or passport?

A new survey has revealed some startling facts about the way we UAE residents travel, and what we value the most while travelling internationally.

While the results of the 2014 Expedia/Egencia Mobile Index reveal the deep dependence modern travellers have on their mobile devices, what Emirates 24|7 found the most interesting was that only one in three (34 per cent) of UAE residents polled said that they feel most anxious when they accidentally get separated from their companion while travelling internationally.

This is less than the global average, where four out of 10 (39 per cent) would be concerned, and much less than travellers from countries such as Denmark, Austria and France, where 58, 57 and 54 per cent respondents, respectively, said they’d be anxious about accidentally losing (getting separated from) their travel companion.

Interestingly, only a fraction of Spanish respondents care for their travel companions, with just 5 per cent seeing it as either top or second reason to get anxious about. Take note if you’re travelling or about to travel with a Spaniard – or, for that matter, with a Thai (17 per cent) or Malay (21 per cent).

What many more UAE residents would feel more anxious about is if they lost money, which was the top (and second) choice of 45 per cent of the country’s residents. However, UAE residents were almost unanimous in their top choice – more than eight in 10 UAE residents (81 per cent) would feel the most anxious if they lost their passports while travelling internationally.

The extent that the UAE’s residents value their passports can be gauged from the fact that the percentage of respondents stating accidental loss of passport as the top cause for anxiousness is the second highest in the world, after Hong Kong (82 per cent), and followed by Singapore (80 per cent).

Compare that with residents of Brazil, where less than half (49 per cent) think of loss of passport as the top reason to be anxious, or Germans and Italians, where 51 and 54 per cent, respectively, see loss of passports worth losing sleep over.

In contrast, travellers from Thailand value money the most when travelling, with 71 per cent Thai respondents claiming that they would feel the most anxious if they unexpectedly lost money while travelling internationally, followed by Spanish travellers (64 per cent) and those from Japan and Malaysia (60 per cent each).

What travellers from Spain also care about –the most in the world – is their luggage, with 43 per cent citing it as something that they’d get most anxious about.

Italians too obsess more about their luggage than their travel companions, with 39 per cent citing loss of luggage, and 32 per cent citing loss of travel companion as something worth getting anxious about. By contrast, only 22 per cent UAE residents would lose sleep over lost baggage.

The loss of a mobile device, on the other hand, concerns travellers from India the most, with 34 per cent (the most in the world) saying they’d get anxious about it. This is followed by travellers from Sweden (31 per cent) and Malaysia (28 per cent) who think loss of a mobile device as something to get ‘most anxious’ about.

UAE residents, on the other hand, don’t give much thought to a lost mobile phone or laptop, with only 18 per cent listing it something that will get them most anxious during international travel.

The survey was commissioned by Expedia and conducted online by Northstar, a global research and consulting firm. The study was conducted among 8,856 employed adults across 25 countries.

If traveling internationally, I would feel MOST anxious if I unexpectedly lost my….?