In this interview right here, I talk with Chris Story about advances.
Advance is a trade term used by bodyguards and other protectors. It means the work done before a client arrives someplace, to make sure that place is safe. When you have a big budget (think a country’s president or a billionaire), you send a team some days ahead to check everything out.
Most parents don’t have that kind of budget. But we can use the concept, and some of their best tools, to prepare for our trips and make them both safer and easier.
5 Tools to Help You Plan for a Safe Vacation
1.Smarttraveller.gov.au
This is the Australian government’s public information site about how safe it is to travel to different countries across the globe. Each country listing includes detailed information about safety, health care, travel advisory, and any important major differences in the local laws.
The US State Department also maintains a similar site. I like Australia’s better because, over the 20 years I’ve been using both, Australia’s seems less influenced by the politics of whoever’s in charge at the time. (Or I just don’t see the influence because I’m less familiar with Australian politics).
Use this site when you’re choosing destinations, and again once you’ve made your choices. It gives a strong overview of the safety realities you will meet when you get there.
2. Google Maps
You already know what this is, and what it does. You might not know how useful it is for safe travel planning.
Once you know where you’re going, you can use this to locate the various places you’ll go: the hotel, museums, tourist attractions, etc. After you use the maps app, switch over to Google Earth. Use both the satellite and street views to get a good sense of what the destination and route look like. You will be surprised how useful those details become, even if it’s just so you know exactly what your destination looks like.
Although this is the best app available to civilians for this kind of planning, it won’t necessarily be useful to you once you’re in-country. Breakups in signal and phone functionality will sometimes kill this app. For real-time information on site, you’ll use Waze (see below).
3. Safe Esteem
The only for-pay app on this list, Safe Explore is an incredibly powerful suite of tools that give you a personalized travel risk report with suggestions. It’s used by professional protectors several thousand times per day.
When you put in your information, it gives you a weighted report that compares property crime, violence, accidents, environmental issues, and health concerns as compared to your home, and other potential destinations. It also offers personal profiles for travelers with specific concerns like women traveling alone, LGBTQ+ travelers, and people with medical conditions.
The app has versions for small business, enterprise, and individuals, so although it does cost some money it’s not prohibitive.
4. Waze
You already have at least one map and route app on your phone, but you should use Waze for two reasons.
First, it’s the most popular app of its kind once you get out of North America. That means it will reliably work most place you’ll want to travel.
Second, it aggressively crowdsources real-time reports of things like accidents, police checkpoints, and bad road conditions.
All put together, this is the winner for your navigation while you’re in-country. Whether you’re driving yourself, or checking the cab driver’s work, it is reliable and accurate in a way that most other apps are not.
5. 911 By Country
This will be the quickest item on your checklist, but potentially the most important if anything goes wrong.
911 is the emergency services phone number for only about 20% of countries in the world. In the UK it’s 999. Vietnam uses 113. Russia, 102.
Jump on this website. Find the number(s) for your destination(s), and put it on the back of your phone with a labelmaker, sticker, or marker.
One Last Thing…
It’s also smart to do a google search for “(Place You’ll Visit) Expat Forums”.
Expat stands for “expatriate”, which means somebody who has left their own country to live someplace else…usually somebody from an English-speaking nation. These forums are populated by people who live where you want to go, and who know the details like any other local plus the particular hazards of being foreigner in that region.
If you haven’t yet, take the time to watch Chris’s video here. He shares many other important tips for safe family travel. The conversation changed how I plan for travel with my family, and will definitely improve how you do it, too!