How travel agents can stop these preventable deaths

10 Mar 2025

Poor communication is most often the cause when there’s a sudden, preventable death of a customer with a severe food allergy, writes Katherine Atkinson, chief executive of the Safer Tourism Foundation

Safer Tourism Foundation has an awareness campaign around allergies © toni-osmundson-unsplash

For most of us, travel is a wonderful opportunity to experience new cultures, including food culture. Tasting new flavours, trying new dishes, eating in different ways – these experiences are often the ones travellers rave about to friends and family.

If you have a life-threatening food allergy, however, travel presents a risk environment that is often unknown, and out of your control. If eating a certain kind of food or ingredient could lead to severe anaphylaxis with possible fatal consequences in the space of an hour, you would (understandably) approach travel with a completely different mindset. Agents and the wider travel industry have an important role to play in making holidays as inclusive as possible for those who travel with severe allergies.

Every year Safer Tourism collects safety incident data from UK tour operators. Our dataset represents around 10.6 million outbound journeys and we see several hundred food allergy reactions each year, a handful of which are fatal. Almost none of those deaths occurs because of cross-contamination in a hotel or restaurant kitchen. Most often something has gone wrong in the communication chain, and this has led to the sudden, preventable death of a customer who thought they had taken every precaution.

Perhaps there’s been a swap in ingredients made by the hotel or restaurant, but this hasn’t been communicated through to the front of house; maybe the manager is fully aware of a customer’s allergy, but the waiting staff haven’t been informed. Or the seriousness of an allergy simply gets lost in translation from one language to another.

Plugging those communications gaps is the key to keeping people with life-threatening allergies safe when they travel. If you are a traveller with a severe food allergy, you need to know that your needs are understood by your agent, your airline, your hotel and any food provider. Translation cards are helpful and widely available, but the communication chain, from the point of booking to leaving a destination, is the critical element that could save your life.

Katherine Atkinson is chief executive of the Safer Tourism Foundation

Travellers with food allergies are experts at their own risk management. They are used to asking restaurant staff about ingredients, bringing their own food, scrutinising labels.

But with allergies on the rise, particularly to milk-based products, there is an increased risk for some travellers, particularly teenagers and young adults. They may be travelling alone for the first time; they may not want to be seen as “different”; they may find it harder to be assertive (and in a foreign language) when asking about food choices.

This year, Safer Tourism is running a campaign to encourage awareness, empathy and kindness amongst travellers. Our latest research shows that one in seven travellers told us that a severe allergy, either their own or a travel companion’s, had affected their holidays. We’re also working with the travel industry directly to understand how we can make holidays more inclusive for people with severe allergies.

Agents play a key role in ensuring travellers with allergies know what to expect and travel providers are informed about their customer’s specific needs. From fam trips and product knowledge to making travel arrangements and coordinating with travel suppliers on the ground, agents can ask important questions, make sure processes are clearly communicated, and ensure that the right staff and suppliers across the travel journey are informed when someone with severe allergies is travelling.

People of all ages with life-threatening allergies often choose to travel with airlines that allow them to pre-board so they can clean the area immediately around their seat. Agents can advise customers on airline policies to enable those travelling with severe allergies to make an informed choice.

One in three travellers with allergies say they go back to the same travel provider time and time again because of the confidence they have in the provider’s ability to handle their requirements, making them very loyal customers. A little goes a long way, and everyone wins.

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