Safety is the main priority when it comes to travel regardless of your destination. Before travel, it is a must to check travel advisories and alerts from your local authority. Your government can provide information to ensure their citizen can travel safely. Travel advisories or warning not by any mean a way to stop you from travelling, unless it is life and death situation involved such as terrorism or global pandemic like covid-19. The best thing to do is to evaluate travel advisories and alert first.
Travel advisories and alerts for safer travel
Travel advisories are issued by government to inform their citizen safety concerns that may affect travel to a particular country or region. In travel advisories you will also find notes from government to show which country or place they don’t have the ability to respond to the problems their citizen travelling there. It can be because the government doesn’t have embassy in that particular country or some other reasons.
Getting to know the travel warning letters
Every government of country may have different format of travel advisories. However, the majority of travel advisories consist of potential risks in a given destination such as terrorism, political unrest, natural disasters, wars, outbreaks of crime and health concerns. They also include risk level of each case so you see which place has higher risk. There are different letters to indicate potential risk such as C for crime,T for terrorism, N for natural disaster, K for kidnapping, etc. Travel advisories may stay static or change according to the situation and circumstances.
Travel alert
The next one is travel alert. It is issued to cover specific safety and security concerns in a country such as demonstrations, weather events, crime trends, etc. Alerts usually come from the embassy and consulate. Travel alerts don’t mean you are not allow to travel. However, it is full of helpful information worth knowing so you know what to expect and anticipate. Travel alerts usually stay shorter than travel advisories which can stay static for months. Travel alerts usually stay for about one month.
Reading the situation
After reading travel advisory and alert, you can evaluate the situation and make your own decision since they are not there to legally stop you from travelling. You can travel at your own risk. However, it is best to weigh down every possibility and risk before travelling. If you decide tot ravel to a place with high rate risk the government will still help you if you run into trouble while being abroad.
Stay alert at all times
Travel advisories usually contain information about dangerous situation such as in terrorism risk. You have to stay alert by finding information who the targets are because it is not rare for terrorism to target foreign tourists.
Find up-to-date informations
Also, it is important to find up-to-date travel advisories and alerts. If they are more than few months old, you can dig in more information from other trusted resources such as international newspaper’s websites, or Google News. Also, find information about your country’s embassy to see how it functions and fully staffed.
