Preparing For Travel

I realized recently, that I hadn’t written anything concerning travel security, in over two years; and in the middle of the holiday/travel season, it seems as good a time as any to talk about it. Travel security, is a huge subject area, in that it covers all your regular day-to-day security concerns, but looks at them from the perspective of being in a foreign/unfamiliar environment e.g. you may be fully aware of the bad streets and neighborhoods in your own locale, but have little knowledge of the risks that exist in the area(s) you will be visiting etc. In this article, I want to look at a few practical steps that can be taken to improve security when travelling.

Anyone who has worked in close protection will tell you that advance work will make the actual detail/trip a lot easier, and ensure that everything goes smoothly – and if there are any incidents they can be dealt with quickly and effectively e.g. if you know where all the hospitals are ahead of time, and somebody gets sick you can act immediately, rather than having to spend possibly precious time locating them, and then working out the best/fastest route to reach them – if such an incident happens in rush hour, the most direct route may not be the fastest. Obviously, for most people going on holiday it’s impossible/cost prohibitive to send an advance party to check things out beforehand, however it is possible to do virtual advance work, and an hour or to on your computer can go a long way towards familiarizing yourself with a new and unknown location.

When I travel for leisure or business, there are two basic things I like to know beforehand: what my hotel or the destination I’m going to stay at looks like, and the route from the airport (or other transport hub) to that hotel/destination looks like. Neither one of them should be a surprise to me. When I spend time in Central London, I rarely stay at large chain style hotels, opting for smaller privately-run establishments, which are usually much cheaper. Often these hotels are large converted houses that are part of a terrace row, and not always particularly easy to visually identify. Using Google Earth, I can trace my routes virtually, and using google maps street view, get a visual on the place where I’m staying before I travel there. Google Earth also points out key features, such as schools and churches that I would pass along the way from say the airport to the hotel, giving me a better understanding of my new/foreign environment. This can be handy, when I’m taking a taxi or ride sharing service, to make sure that they are heading in the right direction, and a) not trying to bump up the fair, or b) trying to abduct me; something that may not be as relevant when visiting London, as it would be when travelling in/to Mexico, or other locales where this is not such an uncommon practice.

Get local currency before you go, and don’t wait to do this at the airport. Cash is still king. Even in modern economies there can be power outages – New York City had a power outage on Sunday that left large parts of the city without power. When this happens, your credit/debit card isn’t worth anything to you e.g. you won’t be able to buy food, dine out etc. It’s even worth getting local currency for countries you are transitioning through e.g. a few years back when I was travelling to Israel, I had a connecting flight that went through Istanbul; so I had a small amount of Turkish Lira, so that if anything happened which kept me there longer than anticipated, and there was a power cut (a combination that was unlikely but possible), I could at least but food and water – call me paranoid but life has made me that way. The reason not to wait till you get to the airport to get currency is that there are times when they will run out; especially of currencies that they don’t hold a lot of – and often these are the countries where cash is a much more dependable commodity than credit cards. In certain locales cigarettes make a good backup to cash, and can be an easy way to make a “bribe” with local officials, than offering them cash.

Get an international driver’s license/permit. In the US, these are issued by either the American Automobile Association (AAA), or the American Automobile Touring Alliance (AATA), who typically charge around $15. You will need to carry your country or state issued license as well, however in about 175 countries, this permit is recognized as an official form of ID. This means that you don’t have to carry your passport (it can be left in the hotel safe) or hand it over to local officials as ID: who in some locales may decide to confiscate it for financial gain. On a more practical note, when hiring a car, the hire-firm may require it, and not recognize a state issued license/permit. It is worth noting that its expiry may be set for a year’s duration, or tied to your own license’s expiry date, so that at some point it will need to be renewed. However, for a very small amount of money it’s good to have an internationally recognized form of ID, which is not your passport.

What dictates most of our safety concerns and our attitudes towards risk is a recency bias i.e. if bad things haven’t happened to us recently – or at all – we’re likely not to think about or consider risk, and/or potential threats and dangers: bad things don’t happen to us, until they do. When bad things happen in a foreign country or unknown locale, we don’t want to be figuring things out in real time. Doing virtual advance work, making sure we have the financial means to deal with any incidents, and preserving our official documents, are three things we want to have in the bag.