Safety should never be a compromise for women who travel

Every year, millions of women fly overseas from UK airports — to relax, to explore, to connect with family, to experience the world. Yet for too many, the question of where to go is inseparable from the question of how safe they will feel once they get there. Holiday Extras commissioned this research to move that conversation on: not to discourage travel, but to arm women with honest, data-driven insight about real experiences at real destinations.

The findings are drawn from 1,000 qualified female respondents surveyed in February 2026 — all of whom had flown overseas from a UK airport within the last two years. Their recency makes this one of the most current snapshots of female traveller safety perception available. 84.3% flew in 2025 or early 2026, meaning their safety impressions reflect the world as it is now, not as it was a decade ago.

The headline finding is broadly positive: 82.2% of women felt safe or very safe at their destination. But within that headline lives a more complex story. Nearly half of all women — 49.6% — changed their behaviour in some way specifically because of their gender. They stayed in at night. They avoided going out alone. They dressed differently. They stayed alert in a way their male travel companions likely did not. Feeling safe and being free to be yourself are not the same thing, and this report tries to honour that distinction.

How the research was conducted

This report is based on original quantitative survey research fielded in February 2026 among UK women aged 18–64 who had flown overseas from a UK airport at some point in 2024, 2025 or early 2026.

Respondents were asked four questions: when they last flew overseas (Q1); which country they visited (Q2); how safe they felt overall as a woman at that destination (Q3, a five-point scale from Very safe to Very unsafe); and whether they changed their behaviour specifically because they are a woman (Q4, a multi-select list of adaptations). All four questions are closed, with Q2 including a free-text write-in option — which accounts for the 105 distinct destination values recorded, including some variations in spelling and naming (e.g. 'Tenerife' appearing as both a country and a Spanish island entry).

A note on ranking methodology: the destination safety ranking produced in this report weights three factors — the proportion of women who felt very or somewhat safe, the proportion who felt unsafe, and the proportion who did not need to change their behaviour. Destinations with fewer than 15 respondents are excluded from the ranked table due to insufficient sample for reliable inference. Morocco (n=30) and Egypt (n=25) sit close to this threshold and their scores should be interpreted with caution.

Eight in ten women felt safe — but nearly half still changed how they behaved

The top-line safety picture is encouraging: 82.2% of women reported feeling safe or very safe at their destination. But the behavioural data tells a more complicated story about what 'feeling safe' actually requires of women in practice.

The gap between feeling safe and travelling freely is one of the defining tensions in this dataset. A woman can feel 'somewhat safe' in a destination precisely *because* she has already limited her night-time activities, avoided going out alone, or dressed more conservatively than she would at home. The safety score, in other words, may partly reflect the effectiveness of the behavioural adaptations women have made — not the inherent safety of the destination itself. This nuance is central to how the destination ranking in Chapter 3 is constructed.

16 respondents (1.6%) selected 'Very unsafe' — the same number who selected 'N/A' in Q4. This alignment may indicate that some respondents in the most difficult situations found the behavioural adaptation question difficult to engage with, or interpreted 'N/A' as 'none of these applied because the situation was beyond ordinary adaptation.' These responses are treated separately in the ranking methodology.

Avoiding going out alone is the most common price women pay for safety abroad

Of the 49.6% of women who adapted their behaviour at their destination, the most common change was avoiding going out alone — a constraint that fundamentally limits the kind of travel experience a woman can have, and one that rarely features in mainstream travel marketing.

The data reveals a hierarchy of adaptation. At the top, 154 women (15.4%) avoided going out alone — a constraint on autonomy that affects solo exploration, restaurant visits, sightseeing and every other unaccompanied activity that makes travel meaningful. Close behind, 105 women (10.5%) felt the need to stay constantly alert — a cognitively exhausting state that transforms a holiday into something closer to a risk-management exercise. A further 81 women (8.1%) limited their night-time activities, constraining when, not just where, they could move.

58 women (5.8%) avoided certain areas or transport — a spatial constraint distinct from simply avoiding going out alone, suggesting specific no-go zones or transport types (metros, taxis, certain neighbourhoods) were perceived as higher-risk. 47 women (4.7%) changed what they wore, adapting their self-presentation to reduce perceived vulnerability or comply with local cultural norms. And 34 women (3.4%) experienced unwanted attention or harassment — not a precaution taken, but an incident endured. While this is the lowest-frequency adaptation, it represents the most visceral form of safety failure and merits its own weight in destination assessment.

Taken together, these adaptations span a spectrum from pragmatic caution to genuine constraint to actual harm. A destination ranking that treats all of these equivalently — or ignores them entirely in favour of headline safety scores — will systematically understate the true cost of travel to some destinations for women.

Spain dominates visits but the top five destinations account for half of all travel

Spain is the overwhelmingly dominant destination in this dataset, visited by nearly one in four respondents. But the broader picture of where UK women are flying reveals a concentration of travel around a small cluster of familiar European and Mediterranean destinations.

Spain alone accounts for 23.5% of all responses — more than double the share of second-placed Greece (8.9%). The top five destinations (Spain, Greece, USA, France, Turkey) together account for 51.1% of all responses, meaning a majority of the dataset's safety experience is concentrated in just five countries. This concentration is both a strength and a limitation: it means the safety scores for these destinations are statistically robust, but it also means the ranking exercise is essentially a ranking of popular European and Mediterranean package-holiday destinations, with long-haul and more exotic destinations underrepresented.

Of the 105 distinct destination values recorded, the vast majority appeared only once or twice. Only 17 destinations have 15 or more respondents — the minimum threshold for meaningful statistical inference. This means destination-level safety rankings are feasible and reliable for Spain, Greece, USA, France, Turkey, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal, Morocco, Ireland, Germany, Egypt, UAE/Dubai, Netherlands and Poland. All other destinations, while fascinating, cannot be ranked with confidence from this data alone.

The sample is recent, representative and robust — with one important caveat on income

The recency and geographic spread of this dataset give it strong validity as a measure of contemporary female traveller safety. But the income data gap means any analysis by household earnings should be treated with care.

The geographic spread of respondents broadly mirrors the UK population distribution. South East (13.6%) and London (13.4%) are the two largest regional concentrations, together accounting for 27.0% of the sample. While this reflects real population density, it is worth noting that London and South East residents may have different travel patterns, incomes and destination preferences than respondents from Northern Ireland (2.7%), the North East (4.0%) or Wales (4.8%). If regional safety perceptions differ systematically — which the data does not allow us to test definitively at this stage — mild geographic skew could affect some destination-level findings.

On income: only 522 of 1,000 respondents (52.2%) provided household earnings data. This is a significant gap. The income distribution among those who did respond is fairly spread across brackets, from 'Less than £15,000' (11.7% of those who answered) to '£100,000 and above' (11.3%). However, with nearly half the sample having opted out of this question, any income-segmented analysis of safety perceptions should be clearly caveated as applying to a self-selected subset rather than the full sample. Holiday Extras recommends treating income cross-tabulations as directional rather than definitive.

North African and Middle Eastern destinations generate the most behavioural adaptation — but sample sizes limit certainty

Destinations like Morocco and Egypt appear repeatedly in discourse about female travel safety. This survey captures real experience from women who have visited them — but the numbers are small enough that destination-level conclusions must be offered carefully.

Morocco was visited by 30 respondents (3.0%) and Egypt by 25 (2.5%). Both sit above the minimum threshold of 15 for cautious ranking inclusion, but below the level at which findings become statistically robust. The raw sample data indicates that women visiting these destinations were among those more likely to report behavioural adaptations — particularly changing what they wore and feeling the need to stay constantly alert — consistent with broader country-level safety guidance. However, the small sample sizes mean these patterns could shift substantially with a larger dataset, and the scores should be presented with appropriate uncertainty language.

Turkey (n=56) offers a more statistically stable picture and is a notable case study in the gap between feeling safe and travelling without constraint. Turkey is one of the UK's most popular holiday destinations, yet it also appears consistently in safety conversations. With 56 respondents, it sits in the tier where findings are informative and rankable, though still short of the confidence levels achievable for Spain (n=235) or Greece (n=89).

The USA (n=67) and France (n=64) offer an important counterpoint. Both are high-volume destinations where many women reported feeling safe and did not feel the need to adapt their behaviour significantly — suggesting that for the UK female traveller, Anglophone familiarity and Western European cultural proximity genuinely correlate with greater reported safety freedom, not just safety perception.

How the behaviours manifested by destination type

What these findings mean for how women plan — and how the industry should respond

This research has practical implications for how women choose destinations, how travel brands communicate safety, and how Holiday Extras can better serve the UK's female travelling majority.

About Holiday Extras

Holiday Extras is the UK's leading provider of airport travel services, helping millions of travellers every year with airport hotels, parking, lounges and transfers.

This research was commissioned to better understand the safety experiences of UK women travelling overseas — and to provide an honest, data-driven foundation for a female traveller safety destination index.

Holiday Extras is committed to helping every traveller — regardless of gender — feel informed, confident and safe from the moment they leave home. For press enquiries contact [email protected]

Research note

This report is based on original quantitative survey research conducted via the Attest platform among 1,000 qualified UK female respondents aged 18–64. Fieldwork was completed on 12 February 2026. Destination-level analysis is statistically robust for destinations with 15 or more respondents. Income cross-tabulations are based on the 522 respondents who provided household earnings data and should be treated as indicative. All percentages are rounded to one decimal place.

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