A UK online travel agency has released figures relating to some of the main currency mistakes that the people of Britain make.
Research conducted by sunshine.co.uk took the views of 2,173 Brits into consideration, all of which were over 18-years-old. Additionally, all participants had been on holiday at least once over the last three years, meaning that the study accurately reflected all of the currency changes that have occurred over recent time.
Out of all of the respondents, 14% admitted that they had taken the completely wrong currency away with them.
However, some of these mistakes were more bizarre than others. For example, out of those people who admitted taking the wrong currency to Egypt, over 62% had actually taken Euros. This is despite the fact that Egypt both isn’t in the European Union and is also only classed as being part of Africa. A similar outcome occurred in Turkey as well and even though this country also isn’t included in the EU, 51% of currency mistakes still involved travellers taking Euros instead of the Turkish Lira.
Some of the results from the survey were a little more understandable though. For example, nine out of ten cases of people taking the wrong currency to Ireland came about because they had used pounds sterling. A similar outcome occurred amongst Brits travelling to Canada, with 77% of mistakes resulting in US dollars being taken as opposed to the Canadian alternative.
While some of these mistakes certainly make a good anecdote for travellers, they can also hurt them financially. This was the case for 84% of people who had taken the wrong currency abroad with them. This group of people were unable to use the currency in their destination country, meaning that they incurred additional expense when exchanging it at the local Bureau de Change.
Chris Clarkson, the managing director of www.sunshine.co.uk echoed these statements, saying the following:
“Taking the wrong currency on holiday can be a huge hassle, so it’s really important that you double check what you’ll need to take with you before you go. Sometimes, certain currencies will still be accepted in countries where it isn’t the main currency. For example, the Caribbean Islands widely accept US dollars, so it’s not going to be a problem if that’s the currency you’ve decided to take; with the exception of Cuba.
“Still, there are no guarantees, so it’s best to take the correct currency for the country you are visiting… just in case!”
It appears as though people travelling to some countries are more at risk to this mistake than those heading to different ones though. For example, over one in five people heading to Turkey had taken the wrong currency, while 16% Egypt-bound travellers had done the same. Canada was the next destination on the list with 13% of travellers making the mistake, with Croatia and Ireland being impacted by 11% and 8% of problems respectively. If you happen to be travelling to the United Arab Emirates or Morocco meanwhile, just 1% of people visiting these countries had made a currency faux pas.
