Independent charity, the Safer Tourism Foundation today announced that package holiday provider, easyJet holidays, has signed up to the Safer Tourism Pledge, further cementing the travel company’s commitment to customer safety.

The Safer Tourism Pledge is a set of commitments, developed in partnership with the travel industry, articulating a stringent approach to traveller risk, health and safety. The pledge was created as a means to review and recognise those businesses that not only have excellent safety systems and protocols in place, but also put collaboration ahead of competition when it comes to customer safety. Safer Tourism assesses the safety management systems of companies wishing to sign up, and travel companies in turn agree to adhere to the Pledge’s six commitments:

1. Share Safer Tourism’s mission - Pledge partners fully support the Safer Tourism Foundation's mission to save lives and reduce preventable injury and harm to travellers while on holiday
2. Safety excellence - Pledge partners will do all they can, within reason, to keep travellers safe and well when travelling and demand the same high standards of those who work with them
3. Advise and inform - Safer Tourism Pledge partners provide travellers with practical advice and information to help them take responsibility for their own safety and wellbeing while travelling
4. Highly responsive - Pledge partners want to hear about genuine concerns travellers have for their safety so that issues can be resolved quicky and problems addressed and fixed
5. Sharing data and best practices - Safer Tourism Pledge partners commit to working collaboratively and sharing travel safety knowledge, for the benefit of everyone who travels
6. Influence for improvement - Pledge partners work with providers around the world and commit to leveraging their influence to improve health and safety standards wherever they operate

Jonathan Perkins, Head of Customer Safety & Wellbeing at easyJet holidays said, “There is nothing more important to us than the safety and wellbeing of our customers when they head on their well-deserved holidays. At easyJet holidays we are totally committed to being there for our customers through every stage of their holiday to ensure that everything goes right, but also to look after them on the rare occasion that their trip doesn’t go quite to plan. So, we’re very proud to be recognised as a company that goes above and beyond, and we’re looking forward to working closely with Safer Tourism and other Pledge partners to continually improve when it comes to traveller safety.”

Safer Tourism Foundation’s CEO, Katherine Atkinson said, “We’re delighted to have easyJet holidays as a new Safer Tourism Pledge partner. easyJet holidays has grown incredibly quickly since it was established just before the Covid pandemic, and we were really impressed at the safety and risk management systems developed to manage that growth. We’re really looking forward to working with easyJet Holidays alongside all our Pledge partners, encouraging the sharing of good practice and working to resolve practical issues to prevent traveller harm.”

As a Safer Tourism Pledge partner, easyJet holidays will join many other leading travel companies in working collaboratively to identify potential travel risks and proactively work on ways to prevent harm to travellers. easyJet holidays will also share their anonymised travel incident data with the Safer Tourism Foundation, helping to build an evidence base to understand the root causes of preventable harm and danger.

The announcement comes on the heels of Safer Tourism Foundation’s recent Pack Safe Appeal campaign, calling on travellers to carry carbon monoxide alarms with them when they travel.

To find out more about the Safer Tourism Foundation and the Safer Tourism Pledge, please visit www.safertourism.org.uk

Notes to editors:

• Katherine Atkinson is available for interviews and can share more about the charity’s remit and aims.
• For a full list of Safer Tourism Pledge partners, please contact Stephanie Boyle stephanie.boyle@safertourism.org.uk

About the Safer Tourism Foundation

The Safer Tourism Foundation is a registered independent charity that aims to save lives and reduce preventable injuries, illness and harm to UK travellers, both at home and abroad. The Safer Tourism Foundation works in collaboration with a wide range of partners to develop practical solutions to help UK travellers stay safe and well when they are on holiday. We are building an evidence base of travel safety incidents accidents, based on data shared by leading travel operators and organisations, and use this to prioritise and evaluate our work, raising awareness and encouraging behavioural change.

The charity was born out of the deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning of Bobby and Christi Shepherd, who died whilst on holiday in Corfu in 2006. Their mother, Sharon Wood, worked with Thomas Cook to set up the charity in 2016, with Thomas Cook providing the initial funding.

About easyJet Holidays

easyJet holidays, which launched in 2019, is one of the UK’s fastest growing tour operators, having taken almost 2 million people away in 2023. Named Travel Brand of The Year in 2024, it offers great-value beach, city and lakes holidays to over 7000 hotels, in more than 100 destinations across Europe, directly through its website and through over 5000 travel agent partners. The ATOL-protected holidays can be secured with a deposit of just £60 per person, including flights and hotel, with 23kg luggage and transfers on beach holidays. easyJet holidays is a member of ABTA, and all packages are covered by its Ultimate Flexibility, offering freedom to change a booking, a refund guarantee, and best price guarantee. In 2024 the holiday provider also started operating from Switzerland, France and Germany.

Winners of the Sustainable Future Award at the Globe Travel Awards, easyJet holidays’ sustainability strategy, ‘Holiday Better’, focuses on three key pillars – create better holiday choices which is about making sustainable travel affordable and accessible to everyone; keep our holidays special which is maximising the benefits and minimising the negative impacts of travel and tourism, and transform travel for everyone which means embedding sustainability into business decisions and behaviours and driving meaningful change in the industry.

The tour operator has partnered with UN Tourism to help develop the first environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework for tourism businesses, co-designing a measurement tool that is meaningful and feasible for better monitoring how tourism businesses impact, and depend on, people, planet and prosperity.