Including everything from ensuring trains, planes and automobiles take you places without a hitch, to providing minimum safety requirements for the food you eat and the adventures you embark on, here’s a look at the top five.
1. Safety on your plate
One of the highlights of travel and tourism is eating local cuisine, but it is not without its dangers. While you might be able to avoid eating fugu1), a fish that can bring on progressive paralysis and kill you within a few hours, you may not be aware of hidden germs lurking on your plate due to poor hygiene practices. Considering that an estimated 600 million people get sick from eating contaminated food each year2), it pays to eat in reputable establishments.
By favouring suppliers who use ISO 22000, Food safety management — Requirements for any organization in the food chain, however, you can have your cake and eat it too. This standard ensures that organizations are providing products that are safe to eat as intended and comply with any food safety regulations.
2. Venture forth in safety
Looking for some thrills and spills on your next trip? Adventure tourism is booming, and so are the safety regulations that go with it.
ISO 21101, Adventure tourism — Safety management systems — Requirements, gives adventure tourism activity providers a way to put in place a safety management system, ensuring participants have a great experience, and survive to tell the tale.
The standard enables the adventure tourism operator to improve their safety performance, meet expectations for participant and staff safety, and support compliance with applicable legal requirements.
3. Safe summer-tobogganing
Tobogganing is fun, family-friendly, and a great way to get your thrills in summer. One of the longest, in Switzerland, is 15 km long, and just to get to the start takes a 25-minute cable-car ride and a two-hour hike uphill. Shorter rides are found the world over, including a three-minute descent on the Great Wall of China3). Wherever you toboggan, safety is paramount.
ISO 19202, Summer toboggan runs — Part 1: Safety requirements and test methods, and Part 2: Safety requirements for operation, provide safety requirements for the design, build and operation of toboggans, covering everything from the planning of the tracks to signage, repair and maintenance.
4. All at sea: keeping safe in the water
When getting overboard is more likely, or even the objective, such as for water sports or boating trips, it’s important to have quality lifejackets that keep you afloat and work as intended.
The ISO 12402 series of standards, Personal flotation devices (several parts) serves as an internationally agreed guide to manufacturers, purchasers and users of flotation devices to ensure the equipment works effectively. It outlines the safety requirements and test methods of lifejackets, buoyancy aids and accessories to protect a user from drowning.
5. All onboard: cruising to safety
Around 30 million holidaymakers are expected to go on a cruising holiday this year, and the industry is growing, with more ships, destinations and themes every year4). The safety of these ships is rarely put into question, and falling overboard is rare, yet it still happened to 18 unlucky passengers in 20185).
ISO/PAS 21195, Ships and marine technology — Systems for the detection of persons while going overboard from ships (Man overboard detection), provides internationally agreed technical specifications for systems designed to detect a person who has gone overboard from a passenger ship, so they can be quickly located and brought back onboard.
Looking for more travel titbits? You’re in luck! If you are prone to catching the travel bug, and your feet itch to discover new places, follow Cath’s journey on social media as she travels around the world looking for tourism standards from 10 July to 9 August.
"Hello world! I'm Cath! Today marks the beginning of my journey around the world! I'll be sending postcards from every country I visit while looking for #tourism standards that support
— ISO (@isostandards) 10 juillet 2019
👊 Sustainability
👊 Accessibility
👊 Safety
See you soon 😉"#TravelDiaries #TravelStandards pic.twitter.com/ubCVdmSN7z
For those who care about our impact on the planet, who want to experience new thrills with no compromise on safety, and think that travel should be accessible to all, you’ll find the hottest standards and stories from our members around the world.
1) Sciences et Avenir, Les 7 plats les plus dangereux du monde
2) World Health Organization Factsheet: Food safety
3) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC Kids: The coolest things about toboggans, accessed 2009-08-05
4) Cruise Lines International Association, 2019 Cruise Trends and Industry Outlook [PDF]
5) Cruise Lines International Association, Report on Operational Incidents 2009-2018