Travel insurer AllClear found that most people either have no idea about where they can travel or wrongly assume they can travel to a country that is not on the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) safe list.

While 49% of people have already booked their next holiday, more than half (51%) of these admit they have no idea if it will be safe to go.

Older travellers are the most likely to be confused about where they can travel, and also the most likely to have planned a holiday next year.

Just days after the new three-tier lockdown restrictions were implemented across the UK, AllClear asked a sample of 2,050 adults which countries, from a given list, were safe to travel to under the FCDO approved destination list.

After finding that two thirds of respondents could not answer – saying they had no idea which countries were safe or not – only one in seven people were able to correctly identify countries that were deemed safe to visit.

The scale of consumer confusion over which countries are deemed safe or not was compounded by further AllClear research.

The results revealed that although 59% of Brits still planned an overseas holiday next year, two thirds said they had no idea which countries fell under the safe to travel guidelines.  A third (34%) incorrectly selected countries that they believed to be safe.

More than half (55%) of travellers with underlying health conditions are planning to go abroad in the next year – yet almost two thirds (62%) of them said they had no idea which countries fell under the safe to travel guidelines, whilst 37% incorrectly chose countries they believed to be safe.

Chris Rolland, CEO of AllClear, said: “In recent months, UK households have been bombarded which changing guidance on Covid and this also applies to overseas travel.  From our new research, it’s the scale of the confusion that is of particular concern, especially given a significant proportion of people are looking to travel abroad in the months ahead, when of course, it is safe to do so.

“There is a job to be done to rebuild trust in travel.  For those planning a trip next year – and many have already booked their holiday for 2021 – our research shows that safety is the top priority, when it comes to the choice of country, accommodation, flights and insurance.

“But ever since The Department of Transport and the FCDO released conflicting lists on where UK residents could travel to without quarantining, there has been confusion. Our research shows this quite clearly and we at AllClear firmly believe consumers need simpler, clearer guidance to help them to make more informed decisions.”