Travel Safety Tips – How to Have a Safe Vacation

A lot of people take time to plan a vacation, but how many people actually plan for potential problems when on their trip? It’s not the most exciting thing to think about when booking a trip, vacations are supposed to be a carefree time to get away from stress. But you can save yourself a lot of heartaches by following our travel safety tips.

Our Top Safety Tips for Travel

It was years of trial and error that helped us learn to have safe travels. We’ve been hospitalized on four continents, airlifted from the Amazon, robbed in Namibia, and scammed in countless countries. We’ve seen it all. Follow these safety tips for travel to have a stress-free vacation and stay safe on your next trip.

When planning for your next trip, follow these travel safety tips to help travel safely and keep your life at home in tip-top condition.

Before Leaving for our Vacation

Planning for a safe and healthy vacation starts before we even leave the country. Once we have our trip dates booked we have a list of things we do to prepare before we go. If we follow these travel safety steps, it makes for a more relaxing vacation and gives us the tools we need should an emergency occur.

• To help you plan for safe travel it’s a good idea to have a routine – Check out our Ultimate Pre-Travel Checklist
• Also, before you travel, check with your government website for health and safety information in the destination you are traveling to. Things change faster than ever these days and it’s good to stay up to date.
• In Canada, we check the Canadian Government travel advisories and we also check the U.S. State Department before choosing our destination.

Get Travel Insurance

The number one thing we always do before traveling is to make sure we have travel insurance. We call our provider to confirm we have full coverage for the duration of our vacation and talk with them about what we can and cannot do.

If we are rock climbing or scuba diving we take a close look at our policy for any general exclusions as well as definitions of high-risk activities. Personally, Dave and I choose to be insured together on one policy, which ends up being more cost-effective than two single insurance plans.

Annual Plan vs Single Trip

We also purchase an annual medical plan because we travel more than once a year. It is more convenient than having to get separate plans for each trip and it saves us money by purchasing one bundle for the year rather than separate plans for each trip.

Even before we traveled for a living, we always bought travel insurance. If we were crossing the border for a short one-day shopping trip or a month-long backpacking adventure, we’d always make sure we were covered. Anything can happen at any time no matter how short the trip.

Travel Emergencies Can Happen

Dave and I have had a lot of mishaps on the road. We’ve been in a motorcycle accident in Thailand, I’ve had a serious blood infection in Africa, we’ve both been violently ill in several countries, and as you may know, Dave broke his back in the Amazon.

Insurance helped us out in those instances by covering the eligible hospital expenses, prescriptions and even flights home. But there are many other potential aspects of travel insurance that make it valuable to us when booking a vacation.

Travel Insurance May Cover

• If our trip is interrupted and we have to leave early we’re covered.
• We need emergency dental work during our trip – it’s covered
• We become sick or injured during our trip, hospital visits are covered
• Our luggage is lost or stolen – they’ve got you covered.
• Check out Do I Really Need Travel Medical Insurance?

Inform Your Bank About Travels

Before you fly, let your bank know where you are going so they don’t assume it is suspicious activity. When purchases are made overseas, banks and often assume it is fraud. Give them a call so they can make a note. Otherwise, you may find your accounts frozen.

We were recently in Cuba and I forgot to let my bank know that we’d be traveling. While in Havana I went to the ATM to withdraw Cuban pesos and my card didn’t work. I then tried my Visa and it didn’t work either. I thought it was the ATM, but when I got home, I had a message that there was a fraud alert on my cards and my accounts were locked. It caused us a lot of hassle as we had to try numerous ATMs and different cards.

Check Travel Advisories

For your own travel safety, always do a quick search to check travel advisories to see if there are any warnings in the country we are visiting.

In the past, we’ve made the mistake of not checking. And during one of our travels, we didn’t realize that an election was going on that caused violent protests and unrest. Had we checked the advisory of the country, we would have waited to visit as there were several deaths and arrests.

Luckily we weren’t affected, (although we did see a military convoy of tanks drive by to arrest the opposition and his followers). It was a very unsettling experience. It’s always good to know what type of situation you are going into so check advisories for hurricane season and weather, volcanic activity, war or disease outbreaks.

Social Media

When thinking about travel safety, it’s important to take your house into consideration. Safety at home is just as important as safety on your travels.

I know people are really excited when going on vacation and want to tell all their friends, but letting everyone know online that you are going to be out of town is an invitation to be robbed. If you really feel the need to brag about your amazing vacation, wait until you get home.

Dave and I rarely post on social media in real-time. We don’t want people to know where we are at any given moment and we don’t want people to know when we’re not in our home. So, save the photo-sharing until you return.

Stop Mail and Newspaper Delivery

If you live in a house, nothing says “we’re not home” more than a pile of newspapers, It’s a simple phone call to stop mail and newspaper delivery while you are away. Get to know your neighbors and ask them to pick up any flyers and newspapers that are left at the front door.

Flyers are the one thing we haven’t been able to figure out how to stop coming in, so it’s good to have a friendly neighbor keep an eye out.

Put Timers on Lights

We are big fans of putting timers on lights to make people believe someone is home. We have timers on our lights all the time set to automatically turn on the evening.

When traveling, we also have a couple of lights set up inside too and we set the timers to turn on our indoor lights from 7 – 11 pm. They can be bought at Walmart, Home Depot, or Canadian Tire for peanuts and it could save a break-in.

Prescriptions and Medications

Before we travel, we make sure to fill any prescriptions that we need and pack them in our carry-on bag. We never check prescription medications in our luggage and always make sure we have it on us, with a copy of our prescription.

Pack a First Aid Kit

We’re not saying to bring the entire kitchen sink with you when traveling, but a basic travel first aid kit is important should anything happen. Simple things like ibuprofen, bandaids, antiseptic and allergy medication are all good things to have on hand. If you want to see what to pack in a first aid kit, we have an entire article on Packing a Travel First Aid Kit For Long Term Travel

Get Proper Vaccines

One of the most important travel safety tips for your health is to look into vaccinations. Before traveling, we do our research to see what vaccines we need well in advance. Some vaccines can take weeks or months to get the sequence of shots needed.

There are many life-threatening diseases that can be contracted in certain parts of the world where a vaccine could save our life. Depending on where we are traveling, we may need vaccines for typhoid, yellow fever, cholera, Japanese Encephalitis, and more. We check our vaccines regularly to make sure they are up to date so we can make sure to stay healthy.

Countries, where Yellow Fever is a risk, won’t even let us in if we don’t have our Yellow Fever vaccine certificate and it is always good to have Hepatitis A & B wherever we go.

There is a lot of information online, but we typically go to a travel clinic to see a doctor who specializes in travel disease so we know exactly what we need.

Travel Safety Tips for While on the Trip

While on your trip, keep your wits about you and always be aware of your surroundings. A lot of people let their guards down while on vacation, but you have to be just as diligent. The tips below will help you travel safely while you are on your vacation.

Money and Cards

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