You are all set to travel, but suddenly, the U.S. government issues a travel warning or a travel alert for your destination. Does this now mean you should cancel your trip? Not necessarily, here is what you need to know.
What is a Travel Alert?
A travel alert issued by the federal government typically warns travelers that a certain country or region of a country is experiencing problems. Alerts are often issued for short-term problems like political demonstrations and natural disasters such as storms or earthquakes.
What is a Travel Warning?
Travel warnings are considered to be more serious in nature than alerts. Travel warnings are often issued for more hazardous situations such as:
- medical reasons, as seen in the Ebola and Zika outbreaks
- terrorism
- unstable governments
- wars
- high levels of crime
- frequent kidnappings
All of these situations pose a present danger to citizens traveling abroad. Travel warnings are often strongly worded and may even discourage visitation to the country or region currently under the warning. However, this does not mean that you cannot travel to the country or region in question. You should exercise extreme caution though.
Travel Bans
The federal government does not issue travel bans lightly. They are reserved for the most extreme cases of violence and danger. For example, the government banned travel to Acapulco in April 2016 because of the extreme rise in homicides and drug-related violence.
Before you travel to any destination, it is wise to check for warnings and alerts on the federal travel website travel.state.gov. While some obvious destinations such as Syria or Libya are inherently dangerous, as of the writing of this post, warnings and alerts have also been issued for frequent vacation destinations such as Haiti and Europe.
Therefore, the best way to ensure your safety is to read the alerts or warnings for your travel destination. Only then can you assess whether your trip should continue or be rescheduled.