Health advice provided to hostelers from Australia: influence of a travelers' information evening

Background: Little is known about the health advice provided to hostelers and the role and influence of hosteling organizations' travelers' information evenings in giving travel health advice. This study was designed to investigate these in relation to the Australian context. Methods: In 1997, hostelers attending travelers' information evenings in two regional centers and one metropolitan location in Queensland were asked to complete self-administered questionnaires. Results: Of 158 questionnaires, 110 (69.6%) were returned. Missing data have been excluded from the analysis. About two-thirds of the hostelers attending the travelers' information evening reported being age 35 years or younger (43/65, 66.2%). Almost two-thirds of attendees were female (42/65, 64.6%). The hostelers responding to this study were fairly evenly divided between regional centers (54/110, 49.1%) and the metropolitan center (56/110, 50.9%). Hostelers indicated that they were traveling to Europe and the United Kingdom (53/62, 85.5%), Canada (17/62, 27.4%), Asia (15/62, 24.2%), United States (10/52, 19.2%), and other destinations (7/51, 13.7%), mostly Africa. Hostelers were significantly more likely to have obtained travel health advice (χ²= 5.02, df = 1, p < .05) if they were traveling within 6 weeks. Hostelers indicated that they obtained advice from general practitioners (41/67, 61.2%), travel agents (29/67, 43.3%), books (22/67, 32.8%), travel clinics (10/67, 14.9%), and other sources (6/67, 9.0%). Most hostelers indicated that they learnt something new about healthy travel from the travelers' information evening (76/100, 76.0%). Of those hostelers who had not sought travel health advice or who had not planned to seek travel health advice prior to the travelers' information evening, almost all indicated that they now would seek travel health advice (32/33, 97.0%). Conclusions: This cross-sectional study found that most hostelers attending an international hosteling organization's travelers' health information session in Australia were in the younger age groups and were predominantly female. Most of these hostelers had sought travel health advice from general practitioners, travel agents, and books. The information provided by the healthy travel session of the travelers' information evenings appeared to be of some benefit to hostelers, particularly as it appeared to have prompted most hostelers who had not yet sought travel health advice to do so