As someone who opted for History over Geography in school, I can identify with those people who do not know where Zanzibar is, what language is spoken in Borneo, and how many miles the Great Wall of China stretches, but what I am surprised to learn, is that a third of all travellers cannot locate their holiday destination on a map!

A survey carried out by latedeals.co.uk, found that we tend to concentrate more on flight times, accommodations, and holiday resort’s amenities, than we do on our actual holiday destination, and of the 13 million that headed abroad during the summer months of July and August, a whopping 34% had no idea where they were going!

Sixty six per cent of Brits believe that Cancun is in the US (not Mexico)… close, but no Margarita!  Fifty two per cent thought Prague was in Sweden, and almost half (48%) did not know that the Alps were in Europe.

When it comes to matching cities to countries they didn’t fare much better, with half of those questioned unable to answer which countries Frankfurt, Milan and Marrakech belong to (38% thought Marrakech was in Dubai), and the other half believed that the Three Valleys were in Austria.

Then we come to languages…  This is something I can most definitely identify with, as when I first moved to Austria and embarked on a German language course, my own brother asked “why on earth wasn’t I learning Austrian! Hmmm

Well, according to the survey, he is not alone – 52% of those taking part in the survey could not name the first language of Amsterdam, and a 56% believe that German is the native language of Brussels!

For me personally, travel is all about learning new things, and as long as we enjoy our holidays abroad, does it really matter if we know where we are going?   I say pack your bags fellow travellers and head off to Nauru, Burkina Faso or Wallachia!