Adventure on a budget for gap-year travellers is always risky

Gap-year travel has become big business over the past decade, with up to 200,000 people from Britain doing it every year – 130,000 of them school-leavers.

With the average gap-year traveller spending £4,800, dozens of firms have sprung up to get a slice of the market.

They typically offer package trips combining backpacking and charity work. Some, including VentureCo, offer a language course as well.

The Year Out Group of established gap-year companies numbers 36, although at the last count there were 76 operators in Britain. One gap-year company, i-to-i, was so successful it was bought by the package holiday group First Choice for £16 million in 2006.

Although there has been a small decline in the number of young people taking a year out between school and university or after their studies, the market has still expanded with the arrival of mid-career and even postcareer gappers.

But there are questions over how well some companies prepare young people for travel in far-flung and often dangerous places and over the corners that may be cut to keep prices down.

Georgia French, 19, was killed in a coach crash in Peru last year, prompting her parents to set up a new charity, GapAid, to advise youngsters on the perils of overseas travel.

Speaking to The Times yesterday Ian French, Georgia’s father, said that youngsters need to be told far more about the risks of transport in developing countries.

“These trips are done to a budget, and normally the students are focused on finding the cheapest possible way to get somewhere. We found out after Georgia’s death that she and her friends considered flying down to Cuzco but got the bus to save $20 or so. We hear this is often the way,” he said.

“The fact is young people are not focused on safety. They are focused on fun and while I don’t want to take away the fun, there are regulations in place that make transport safe in this country that simply don’t exist in a developing country.”

Mr French and his wife Pat discovered that 557 people were killed and 2,581 injured in interprovincial bus crashes in Peru between 2004-2005 and wish their daughter had known that before she set off.

The couple are fundraising and hope to launch their venture in a few weeks.

“The number one thing we want to see is the companies selling these gap year deals to exercise a duty of care to the young people. If they are taking their money, they have to look at them, yet we see time and time again transport on unsafe vehicles, attacks on people and even kidnappings,” he said.

Bad experiences are commonplace. The Foreign Office has said around 25 per cent of gap-year travellers are likely to suffer a bad experience, including theft or illness, abroad.

Some companies offer a basic induction course, either in Britain or on arrival, but questions may now be raised about whether they are adequate.

“Half the fun of these trips is taking risks. What is needed is proper risk assessment.

“Unfortunately, courses that offer rigorous risk assessment cost about £500, which is quite a big chunk out of a gap-year budget,” Mr French said.

Article taken from The Times, April 14, 2008