Official travel advice provided by your home country

Your home country will most probably provide what is called “travel advice”.  This is information on the risks and dangers they’ve identified with their nationals travelling to other countries.  Virtually every country in the world has a travel advisories against it.  Most of them it’s the basic travel advice of keeping valuables hidden and not going near any demonstrations etc… but for some of the more unstable countries there will be specific advice issued which can range from a blanket request to not travel there, to listing specific areas that are not tourist friendly and should be avoided.

You may not think this is relevant to you because of where you are travelling to but you may be surprised at what is happening on the ground there.  On the whole, the advice is mainly just to make you aware of the risks (scare is a harsh word but sometimes is very apt) but you do need to check because you may find if you disregard the travel advisory and something happens, your travel insurance may be completely invalidated or they may not pay out on a specific claim. You should check your government website for the advisories and if you can, register for email updates for that country.

The other thing most countries do is provide a way for you to register on their website and tell them where you are going and when.  This means if something does happen, for example an earthquake or armed insurrection, they have an idea of who is in the country.  If you check  your government website, you should find the page to register.

The UK is moving to a different model now.  From this year, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) no longer allows you to register where you are travelling to and instead suggests you follow their Twitter account where you can get up to date information and contact them for quick advice if you have any problems when travelling.  The FCO still provide Travel Advisories which I suggest you sign up for.  They even have a LGBT travel advice page, which is well worth a read.

As always, you need to use your judgement when reading the advisories.  Most trips are trouble free, despite the warnings. You just need to be aware or as they say, “Alert, not alarmed”.