There was one thing on everyone’s minds, one topic filled every living room and one major cause of concern for a lot of people – whether they were Australian, American or European – on Friday night, Brexit.
Late last week, social media was abuzz with users expressing their shock over last week’s referendum, which saw a little more than half of the British population (52 percent) vote in favour of leaving the European Union.
You’ve probably read every news article by now and become a bit of a self-proclaimed expert on the topic, so we’ll spare you further details about the vote itself.
Instead let’s look at some concerns amongst travellers now that Britain has decided to part ways with the rest of Europe.
The benefit of joining the European Union back in 1993 was that it not only brought European countries together under one body, it also resulted in a number of benefits, including cross-country travel and employment.
With Britain breaking up with its neighbours, it could mean that millions of British holidaymakers (including those who live in Australia and like to travel on their British passport) won’t be able to use their passports to freely travel around the continent.
Based on an update to Google Trend’s Twitter page, the thought of losing visa-free travel in Europe has frightened A LOT of British travellers who took to the search engine on Friday to find out how they can claim their Irish heritage.
The Google-authorised Twitter page reported a 100 percent increase in searches for ‘Irish passport’.
Unsurprisingly, a large number of the searches came from Northern Ireland, which voted in favour of staying in the European Union.
+100% spike in UK searches for “getting an Irish passport” after #Brexit votehttps://t.co/qyssi0v91x pic.twitter.com/aUdHplLMaS
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016
Other search terms that peaked after the referendum, included ‘are we European’ and ‘what is the EU’ (no judgement, but perhaps something people should have known before going into the booth).
“Are we European” spiked in @Google search yesterday following the #EURefResults https://t.co/gpkqdELD5H pic.twitter.com/I2FY69Etcv
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016
“What is the EU?” is the second top UK question on the EU since the #EURefResults were officially announced pic.twitter.com/1q4VAX3qcm
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016