Travel Advisories and Travel Warnings are issued by several governments to tell their citizens which countries or parts of countries might be of concern.

It sounds pretty scary to say that there is an advisory or warning about going somewhere, but just because a government issues one of these, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad idea to plan a trip to that country.

With terrorism all in the news today, many people get nervous, but if you want to be a traveler you need to learn to weigh the warnings and the news.

You may decide that it’s worth it to travel anyway.  Terrorism is nothing new; different areas have had unrest in the past.  Read those advisories and decide if what they are talking about will affect you and your trip.  Don’t trust them blindly.

Travel advisories are issued for a number of reasons.  Terrorism is only one of them.  They can be issued because of natural disasters, political unrest, disease outbreaks or high crime areas.  You need to read to see if these are long term warnings or short term travel advisories.

We think it’s a good idea to check with several different sources… as English speakers, we check to see what the governments of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S are saying.  They don’t always agree.  So if there are differing points of view, what should you do? (more…)