The British city of York is considered to be the safest city in the world, followed by Bath, Edinburgh and Brighton, according to a new survey.

Venice, Vienna, Dublin, Florence, Stockholm and Copenhagen made up the rest of the top 10 safest cities while Cairo, Bangkok, Istanbul and Marrakech were deemed the most risky cities and even although London is one of the most popular locations for expats it did not make the top 10.

UK expat travel
The poll by Post Office Travel Insurance found that 72% of respondents felt York was safe, compared to 1% considering it risky, and 26% having no view. In contrast, only 7% thought Cairo was safe and 56% felt it was dangerous.

Some 47% thought Bangkok was risky, 39% named Istanbul as unsafe, 35 % Marrakech, 34% Moscow and 23% Miami.

While 58% thought London was safe, 16% labelled the city as risky and of the eight UK and Irish destinations in the survey, the least safe was Belfast with only 37% deeming it safe.

But the research revealed that people’s perceptions of risk do not always match reality. For example, although respondents expressed the view that Moscow and Miami were ‘risky’ cities, none of those who had actually visited the two cities experienced problems.

By contrast, while Athens and Hong Kong emerged as the cities where visitors had most often encountered difficulties, with 10% of people reporting problems, fewer respondents rated them risky. Only 11% believed Athens to be high risk and 15% rated Hong Kong as risky.

More positively, Bath scored a clean sheet as none of the 251 survey respondents who had visited the city reported any problems. And although visitor numbers were smaller, nor did any of those who had visited Riga, Singapore and Stockholm.

The research also found that overall one in 15 were victims of crime during their last city visit. Yet, while 55% of respondents said the possibility of crime against them was an important factor when deciding whether to visit a city, some 46% had failed to take out travel insurance.

The most common occurrence was having a wallet and the money in it stolen at 24%. Between 14% and 19% suffered from the theft of a credit card, passport, electrical device, mobile phone, clothing, handbag/briefcase, luggage, sunglasses and jewellery.

Over three in five of respondents who had been victims of theft paid to replace stolen items because they were not covered by travel insurance. The Post Office research found that the average cost incurred by uninsured people varied from £302 for a wallet, £414 for an electrical device such as an iPad and £429 for a mobile phone to £645 for items of clothing, £770 for a handbag and £1,472 for jewellery.

The Post Office Travel Insurance research also established that 26% felt they had been ‘ripped off’ on city visits, rising to 43% of younger people, aged 18 to 24.
The biggest culprits across all destinations were thought to be taxi drivers. Some 8% complained of being overcharged and 6% said they were taken on a longer route than necessary, which increased the cost of taxi journeys.

Other complaints included 7% being overcharged in shops, restaurants and bars while 7% also felt they had been made to pay a service charge they did not think was justified.