This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

To celebrate my retirement from full-time employment, my wife Nancy and I booked a three-week trip to Europe in April with stops in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and London.

As we paid our trip in advance, we did something we almost always do. We purchased travel insurance mostly with the thought that we could get our money back in the event of a health crisis or family emergency. Our travel agent always recommends this, even though we had never used it.

About three weeks before we were scheduled to leave, the bombing attack in Brussels occurred and the U.S. State Department issued a warning about traveling to Europe.

Nancy, who had never been to Europe, was nervous. Though I have been to Europe around a dozen times, the events concerned me as well. The cities we had chosen to visit seemed like prime attacks.

After much soul searching, we decided to postpone our trip until 2017 to see if things calmed down a bit. We didn't do this lightly. I personally hated the fact that it felt as though the terrorists were winning. We might have gone had we not purchased the travel insurance that ended up refunding the several thousand dollars we had invested in our trip.

Thinking about this, I was interested in a news release that came across my email Monday from Allianz Global Assistance. It indicated that Nancy and I were not alone.

According to the annual Vacation Confidence Index, 86 percent of Americans are concerned about terrorists attacks occurring while on various regions of the world. Many made major changes in their travel plans.

Seventy-five percent were most concerned about an attack in the Middle East followed by 66 percent in Europe and 63 percent in Africa.

The recent attacks in Istanbul, Israel, Paris, Brussels and Nice influenced Americans even further. Twenty-two percent said the fear of further violence influenced their vacation planning in some way. Six percent cancelled trips, five percent changed locations, four percent travel dates, four percent the mode of transportation and three percent changed the mode of transportation.

It is interesting that older age groups that I belong to have significant fear or traveling to different regions of the world, while those ages 18 to 34 have the greatest fear of an attack happening on home soil.

Still, people are traveling. Flight bookings showed a 10 percent overall increase in travel to Europe this summer.

"What we're seeing is that the American traveler is a complex demographic that shares common fears and concerns, but deviate greatly on where they find those fears and how they face them," said Daniel Durazo, director of communications at Allianz Global Assistance USA. "But we're pleased to see that whatever those differences are, one thing that remains consistent is that they are finding ways to follow their passion of seeing the world despite the challenges that come with traveling in a time of terror."