Too old to tour at 81 – are age limits on holidays fair?

Some tests can compute your mental age so perhaps other tests could be devised to compute ones effective physical age – at least as far as participation on holidays go.

In 2006 I was on a walking holiday in North Wales with HF. The venue also hosted a Painting holiday so when an grey haired lady in her 70’s started talking to me on arrival day I naturally assumed she was a painter – an assumption which her boots and rucksack the following morning quickly disabused me of. I was on the “High Level” walking group – so was she. I was 20 years younger than she was, and she was walking way out in front. Moreover on the mid week “day off” she went off with the sole 20 year old in the party to scale the more difficult peaks in the Snowden range, that HF deem too hard for ordinary folk like me!

Years earlier, also with HF, I had been clambering over Barnacle Ridge on the Isle of Arran admiring the daring of the man in front. Now in his 70’s he had only taken up walking after a life as a butcher. Whilst I was wet, tired , puffing with exhaustion and extremely fearful at the death defying scrambling I was committed to, he was looking for more interesting (= difficult) routes across the ridge ahead. On being asked if he worried about the dangers he responded that he had enjoyed a good life and it did not matter much if he fell off in pursuit of a little more excitement. Intellectually I agreed, but emotionally I was not comforted!

So although I too have suffered from slow people holding up a holiday group – they have almost always been my juniors by a generation or two. The only “age” that matters in such matters is the effective age for the activity and who can manage to define that?

How can age restrictions be fair unless they are in place for legal reasons? It’s ridiculous! However, ageism does seem to crop up rather often in our society. I would suggest any elderly citizens affected by such ludicrous ‘rules’ simply take their business elsewhere.

I know there are tour operators who cater for over 80’s because the WW2 veterans can still apply for lottery funding (ends Jan 2012) through the Heroes Return 2 programme. I’ve just finished reading about Ted Cachart, who, at 85, is now helping others apply for these grants so they can afford to travel overseas on World War Two heritage tours, even if it’s for no other reason than to pay their final respects to lands where their loved ones fought and died. It’s still a tour and it’s still over 80s, no age restrictions that I’m aware of – I expect all veterans and their spouses, widows or widowers must be 85+

18-30 I can understand, it is age specific and it is drawing a similar group of people together without there being a generation gap if they ‘get it together’ while on holiday. But imposing an upper limit without involving the health, fitness and mobility aspects is just ridiculous.

Honestly, I feel that age limits as well as being unfair, do not always solve the potential problems that traders invisage.

In the case of Martin Randall’s Travel policy, I know of several over 80’s who are very fit and would easily manage this type of holiday. I also know of just as many under that age – some in their 50/60 who are in poor health and would not be able to manage a holiday of this type. In that respect, what about the disabled? Are they to be refused admission to certain types of holiday because of sight/hearing/mobility problems? This is certainly a contensious issue and I will be interested to hear the judgement in this matter.

Some years back we travelled with a major group tours company on a quite adventurous itinerary in Costa Rica. Before we left Heathrow we had met one of our fellow travellers, who was extremely confused and probably would not have made it onto the plane without assistance. He was in his mid-eighties. On day three of the holiday, we travelled by coach over unmetalled roads then by boat to a remote beach/jungle area inaccessible by road. The man slipped on leaving the boat and gashed his shin quite badly. It transpired that he was on Warfarin and the bleeding could not be staunched. He had to be air-lifted to hospital accompanied by our tour manager, whom we did not see again. We eventually completed the trip with a local guide only, thankfully a very good one.

Whilst I do not think a blanket age-related ban would be reasonable (we have travelled with remarkably fit octogenarians) I do feel that travel companies would be well-advised both to make clear the fitness levels they require for a given trip and to require clients to sign up to them, including provision of a ‘fit to travel’ medical certificate where felt necessary.

PS I have always wondered whether or not he had travel insurance and if so, how he secured it (or at what price).

I know I’ve joined this conversation about one year too late, but I’ve just had an enquiry from someone asking about whether holiday companies can set age restrictions. As this was the first time I’ve been asked the question in over 18 years of working for a tourism charity, this article was very helpful in finding out where we are. I’ve also submitted their question to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, although it may take a while for a response.

I’m the director of a small tour operator specialising in cultural tours similar to the (much larger) company Martin Randall which we are discussing here. In some ways I sympathise with Martin Randall but I do think there are ways round the problem. We don’t have an age cut-off for booking as we recognise that age isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of fitness – we sometimes have perfectly fit people in their 90’s on our group tours! However we do ask everyone who is over 80 to take a letter to their GP which explains the fitness levels required and asking them to confirm that they think the client is going to manage. The reason that we do this is that in almost 30 years of operating tours we have experienced our most serious problems abroad with clients who are over 80 and who have over-estimated their fitness. At this age, many of them are travelling on their own (having been widowed) so there is often no-one else there to help, which otherwise may make all the difference. We have had clients with dementia wandering into other people’s rooms at night, several bad accidents needing hospitalisation where frail clients have fallen, and even deaths abroad. At a guess I would say well over 90% of these problems occurred with clients who were over 80. Similarly to Martin Randall we have also had letters of complaint from other clients, some asking for compensation, when a group has been unable to see everything advertised because one or two clients have not been able to keep up. The GP letter that we ask for is not fool-proof – we still get clients with signed letters who we only discover whilst on the tour are actually unable to cope, however in doing this we feel we have done our best to help people make informed decisions and we can honestly say to the other people in the group that we have done as much as we can to ensure everyone is fit to travel without discriminating against anyone arbitrarily. I don’t know why Martin Randall can’t do the same.