The foundation said there was clear evidence of Holiday Head at work, with 44% saying the incident was down to an overestimation of their own physical abilities or fitness/mobility levels.
The report said: “In fact, one in five respondents admitted they would try a more strenuous hike or cycle ride than they would attempt at home.”
A quarter said they did not want to miss out on what others were doing and 21% said they “simply threw caution to the wind”.
The charity warned: “Changes in our physical capabilities can be hard to accept. Most people don’t want to believe or acknowledge that they perhaps can’t do everything they could do when they were younger, fitter or more mobile, especially when on holiday.”
’Optimism bias’
Katherine Atkinson, Safer Tourism Foundation chief executive, said Holiday Head was “not intrinsically bad”, but led to an optimism bias. “It can also mean we don’t stop and think, and so find ourselves doing risky, reckless or dangerous things we simply wouldn’t contemplate at home,” she said.
“Having said that, even when we’ve made a poor choice, most of the time we don’t come to harm, partly because most travel providers take health and safety extremely seriously and have systems and procedures in place to keep their customers safe.
“However, no trip or activity can guarantee our individual safety, so it’s worth being aware of our own Holiday Head and how it can affect our decisions.
“That doesn’t mean becoming a health and safety bore on holiday, but it could mean being curious about a provider’s safety measures before embarking on an activity, or just occasionally asking ourselves, when thinking about our own risk behaviours, ‘would I do this at home?’.”
