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Fancy a fortnight in…..Albania or Libya?
Morocco, Albania, Dubai, Libya and India are predicted to emerge as new holiday hot spots for 2007.
The forecast comes from travel insurer Europ Assistance, which is working on establishing a medical support network in the countries to ensure policyholders are looked after should they fall ill or have an accident.
EA, which provides travel insurance to around 1.5 million British travellers a year cites low-cost air fares and a desire to explore new travel ‘frontiers’ as encouraging travellers of all ages to turn away from traditional destinations.
UK & Ireland sales and marketing director Rob Upton said: “A number of low-cost carriers are already beginning to open up services to Morocco, so we expect a significant increase in travel there at the latter part of 2006 and early in 2007. In addition, Albania will open up in June, once British Airways starts its service to Tirana.
“On the long haul front, Dubai is increasingly popular with holidaymakers and foreign home buyers and Libya looks set to follow in 2007. We believe India will also start to see a very big increase in travellers from the UK and Ireland.”
The job of identifying new areas of interest for British travellers is down to EA’s international network management team who can prepare the way, introducing new agents in countries or regions with limited assistance resources and arranging clinical assessment audits of the medical facilities available.
“Our biggest challenge in eastern Europe is ensuring the quality of medical care. We carry out clinical assessment audits of facilities in key resorts, to ensure we have all the details needed so a customer ends up in a facility suitable for their medical needs,” said Upton. “In Albania medical treatment is very basic and repatriation costs will be high, as no scheduled airline operating out of there offers stretcher facilities, so we would need to charter an air taxi to fly home a stretcher patient,” said Upton.
“We’re also increasingly encountering a new profile of customer – the adventurous elderly traveller, with even people in their 80s heading for remote long-haul locations. We applaud their spirit but, of course, it sets us a whole new challenge, yet another reason why we must always stay one step ahead.”
Report by Phil Davies
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