Following on from yesterday’s release of a new ground-breaking collaborative survey – studying the effects of the Ebola outbreak on travelling behaviour worldwide – m1nd-set and TRBusiness can now reveal that travellers from the Middle East & Africa are significantly more likely to reconsider their travel plans than travellers from other nationalities.

 

It seems that travellers from the Middle East & Africa are significantly more concerned, than those from the rest of the world, about the Ebola outbreak with 34% of travellers from the region saying they would reconsider their travel plans. This percentage was just slightly more than travellers from the Asia Pacific region at 32%.

 

Yesterday, TRBusiness revealed that, over a quarter of travellers say that the Ebola outbreak would make them reconsider their travel plans and only three out of ten travellers think that airport screening will be effective to detect Ebola.

 

It was also revealed that 77% of travellers say that the Ebola outbreak would make them reconsider travel plans to affected and surrounding areas.

 

 

The survey, which recruited the opinions of 2,032 international travellers, from m1nd-set’s unique database was conducted between 17th and 20th October 2014 and reflects a global perspective, including all major regions of the world.

 

The second part of the survey concentrated on the difference separating nationalities. According to part two of the survey, Europeans less likely to reconsider their travel plans: only 20% would do so. Americans are close to the average, with 25% of travellers who would reconsider their travel plans.

 

Travel plans to affected and surrounding areas follow a similar pattern, with AsPac and M.E & Africa the most likely to reconsider them (80% and 79%) and Americans and Europeans the least likely (74% and 75%).

 

 

Moving on to perceptions of airport screening, travellers from the Middle East & Africa are by far the most optimistic regarding the effectivity of airport screening (38% think it will be effective) whereas Americans are the least positive about it (24%).

 

AsPac travellers are more likely than the average to believe in its effectivity (33%) whereas Europeans are slightly below the average in this regard (28%).

 

The impact of airport screening on journey overall will be strongest among Americans travellers (24% claim it will have a negative impact). AsPac travellers are on the other hand the least likely to be affected (18%).

 

When looking specifically at the effect of airport screening on airport behaviour, the results are quite different as we find that the most negatively affected would be travellers from Middle East & Africa (24%) whereas Americans would be the least affected (19%).