New study shows Brits’ vacation flings are common but not always safe

British people have been going to Italy to hook up for more than a century. (credit: A Room with a View)

Vacation flings are the stuff of bad romance movies and unhappy trips to the clinic, but now they are also the subject of two studies published in a British Medical Journal publication called Sexually Transmitted Infections. Two groups of researchers analyzed surveys of what British people do when they travel abroad and found that sex is high on the list.

One study, authored by population health researcher Clare Tanton and her colleagues, was an examination of 12,530 people who took part in the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles between 2010 and 2012. The group was composed of people from 16-74 years old, who reported having at least one sexual partner in the past five years. Out of this group, 9.2 percent of men and 5.3 percent of women said they found one or more new sexual partners while outside England. And out of those groups, according to Tanton and her colleagues, there was a lot of "disassortative sexual mixing," meaning cross-nationality intermingling.

In total, 72 percent of men said their overseas hookups were with non-UK residents, while 58 percent of women said the same. Interestingly, the study states that "men were less likely than women to report having partners from the Middle East/North Africa (2.4 percent vs 5.7 percent)." People who had sex with non-UK residents were also less likely to identify themselves by ticking the box for "White (British)" on the survey form.

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