What could be safer than staying in the U.S.?

It is one of the most important questions a client will ever ask.

“How safe is it to go there?”

We are bombarded with particles of news every hour of every day. We realize that the world is not always a safe place.

This continent of ours is relatively isolated, and the vast majority of us never, ever leave it. Most of us will never have passports. It is, we think, simply not worth the risk of visiting places that are less safe than our lives here at home in the U.S. 

Intelligence about the relative safety of countries around the world comes in the form of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks countries on a complicated series of scores in areas including societal safety and security, ongoing domestic and international conflict and the degree of internal militarization.

The GPI safety ratings must not be confused with the World Happiness Report, which I will be dealing with in a future column. The annual safety report is not about standard of living; it is entirely about the primary question clients ask us: “How safe is it over there compared to here?”

The safest place you can go is no surprise. As it has been for the past decade, Iceland is the safest country in the world, according to the GPI. There isn’t a single McDonald’s in the country, but I can’t prove a correlation. But here is a fact that might possibly be relevant: Iceland is, according to the World Economic Forum, the most gender-equal country on Earth.

The second-safest country on Earth is New Zealand. Ireland, Denmark and Austria follow. Sort of predictable, I suppose. But then come the seventh- and eighth-safest countries, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, followed in ninth and 10th place, respectively, by Singapore — where I believe crime is outlawed — and Japan, where crime is considered to be impolite. 

You might notice that seven of the 10 safest countries according to the GPI are in Europe, so going forward it might be wise to become a Europe specialist. We now have a nice grouping of tourist-friendly, intriguing, beautiful and “safest places in the world” countries to recommend to our clients. 

There really is an answer to the question, “Where will I be most safe?” But you may have noticed that one country is missing in this discussion: Where is the U.S. in the newest GPI rankings?

Actually, we did make the list — in the 129th position, just behind Azerbaijan and ahead of Brazil.

Now, we all know that statistics can be interpreted and manipulated, and we might actually be in 117th place through some error of accounting. But the reality is that our safety score places us in the lower end of the worldwide ratings, meaning that visitors to the U.S. — as well as current residents ­– are actually safer walking the streets and locking their doors at night in 128 countries around the world then they are here.

It might be a wonderful new business model, if you think about it: “Our agency sends guests exclusively to countries that are statistically safer than the United States.”

But we need to take on the job of educating clients who are new to international leisure travel about safety realities. Most of the time, no matter where you are headed overseas, as soon as your aircraft lifts off and the seat belt sign goes off, your life expectancy goes up just a tiny, tiny bit.

We cannot shy away from the facts. We owe each of our clients a truthful perspective on their relative safety when they travel overseas. 

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