The ridiculousness of travel advisories

It can be so difficult to assess travel risk

Travel advisories - those proclamations by numerous governments telling their citizens of dangers to be aware of at other countries around the world - are in the spotlight right now with the news that Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia, India, the UAE and Indonesia have all issued travel alerts to their nationals visiting the UK, warning them to stay away from demonstrations as the country faces a significant wave of rioting. No doubt the list of countries advising against travel to the UK will increase in the following days.

While they’ve got a point - the current extent of the disturbances around the UK is certainly very troubling indeed - travel advisories often paint a rather inaccurate picture of the dangers a visitor faces.

For unless you actively look to take part in these demonstrations and riots, for example, the chance of exposing yourself to danger are very slim indeed. The riots have been concentrated on small, specific areas, not huge swathes of neighbourhoods.

The Australian government’s warning issued this week said travellers to the UK should "exercise a high degree of caution in the UK due to the threat of terrorism".

That seems to paint rather an alarmist picture.

It goes on: “Monitor the media for information and updates. Follow the instructions of local authorities.”

You begin to wonder how you can enjoy a relaxing holiday in the UK at all right now if you’re being advised to stay on high alert at all times.

One also can’t help wondering whether these travel advisories are overly cautious so there’s no legal comeback, just like those annoying stickers hotels put in bathrooms like ‘Beware: hot water’.

Africa particularly suffers from a perception of high risk for the traveller. Certainly it has some very dangerous regions and threats, but it’s rare for a holidaymaker there to get into trouble. I’ve travelled throughout Africa for three decades and have felt completely safe almost all of that time.

It is a pity so many people decide not to explore the continent for fear of risks like contracting Ebola or being robbed or kidnapped or becoming involved in a terrorism attack due to travel there. It highlights how badly we tend to assess travel risk abroad.

During the 2019 Ebola outbreak in Africa, for example, more people were dying from measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo than Ebola, and the chances of a holidaymaker or business visitor coming into contact with the virus there was negligible. Indeed, at the time the National Health Service said that the risk to travellers was “extremely low”.

And when Ebola struck in Africa between 2013 and 2016 it scared off many tourists and, despite the large distance involved, devastated tourism in East African countries too – even though the Ebola outbreak at that time, in West Africa, happened to be nearer Madrid than the eastern side of the continent. It affected tourism in South Africa too, even though the country is even further away.

I once had a discussion with a pilot in Botswana about the many perceived risks Europeans believe are present in Africa. He told me that as a child he grew up during the Zimbabwe War of Liberation (also known as the Rhodesian Bush War) and had to carry a gun throughout his childhood. Along with the ever-present threat of deadly spiders and snakes, and dramatic tropical diseases. I suggested that it was a miracle he was still alive.

“But you’ve just told me that you live on a five-lane highway, a road where you saw a man run over and killed a month ago,” he said. “And you live in London, which I read is a hotbed of stabbings and shootings.” He was clearly just as puzzled that I was still standing as I was that he had survived.

It’s a good idea to combine a read of a government travel advisory alongside a chat if possible with a local, who knows the current situation on the ground best. While in Uganda once I was invited to visit neighbouring Burundi and seriously considered a visit, until a Ugandan I met the next day said he wouldn’t go near the place at the time, having personally known a number of people who had been killed or got into serious trouble there.

I then asked him whether he’d recommend travelling to the east of Uganda, as at the time the UK travel advisory was strongly warning against it. He burst out laughing and said it would be absolutely fine to go there.

The greatest risks on a trip to sub-Saharan Africa are from traffic accidents and malaria, and there’s lots you can do to lessen the dangers of both: such as avoiding travel at night and choosing a driver and vehicle you instinctively feel safe with in the former case, and ensuring you take malaria tablets, sleep under a mosquito net and use insect repellent in the latter. It’s not rocket science.

You have to be sensible while you’re in Africa and many other places of course, not flaunting any indication of wealth or going on a pub crawl in dodgy parts of the city at midnight and so on. But the risks should be weighed against the risks in our own countries.

London, for example, has murders, violent crimes and stabbings on an ongoing basis. If the UK Foreign Office had a travel advisory for its own country, my country, it would be littered with precautions.

One problem with trying to assess the dangers of travelling to a particular location is, like many things in life, that the thing you are fearing is often not the thing you should be worrying about.

For example, there was a spike in interest in tourist tours of Chernobyl following the broadcast of the superb HBO television drama about the nuclear disaster in 1986. But visitors feared the amount of radiation they might receive on a trip. However, as long as you go with a reputable tour firm, keep to the main pathways and don’t ignore the advice you are given, you should have no issues at all.

Indeed, you would probably be exposed to more radiation on a long haul flight to Chernobyl than on a Chernobyl tour itself. The biggest hazard by far there is the manhole covers scrap metal merchants removed from the streets and the huge holes in the floors of damaged buildings that a visitor could fall through.

Many holidaymakers stick to Europe in the belief that potential dangers will be lowest in such familiar surroundings. Yet two of my most potentially dangerous holidays have been in the Med. I once stayed with my family at a Greek villa and it seemed completely safe - until my young children complained of a ‘funny feeling’, a jolt when they touched the taps when having a bath. It emerged that the bathroom electrics had not been wired correctly, giving them electric shocks, which of course could have had catastrophic results.

More recently I tried scuba diving for the first time, at the Spanish island of Tenerife. Knowing no better, I thought the five-minute ‘course’ given by my instructor - which was peppered with jokes about possibly not coming back up alive - was normal. It wasn’t until later that I learned that for the depth we were going I should have had a proper diving course of several days’ duration to learn about pressure underwater, how to check and use the equipment, and how to act if things went wrong. The experienced divers I told afterwards about the dive were appalled.

A look at homicide rates around the world further complicates assessment of risk. A list of countries with the most intentional homicides per 100,000 people compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime shows that Zimbabwe is only a slither more dangerous in that respect than the US, for example, and Latvia having a higher homicide rate than Rwanda. Gibraltar has more murders than Liberia, Lithuania than Iran. Mauritius in on a par with the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Israel with France, Guinea-Bissau with New Zealand, Belgium with Bosnia and so on.

However, it’s best not to read too much into such league tables when trying to assess travel risk, as the reliability of reporting of murder rates and the fact that they may be under-reported for political reasons comes into play also. The famous expression, "there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics" certainly comes to mind here.

Ultimately it comes down to a combination of taking travel advisories into account, reading travel guides, obtaining any local advice you can glean, taking sensible precautions. And bearing in mind that your insurance won’t be valid if your government’s advisory says you should not enter a country or region it says you shouldn’t go to.

But there’s nothing like gut feeling and simply taking each day as it comes. I’ve several times screamed at a driver to drive more safely after he’s thought it a good idea to overtake a lorry at speed on a blind bend, or changed my travel plans when a neighbourhood seems more dangerous than I had envisioned. And other times I’ve feared a host of dangers at a new destination and marvelled at how calm and safe it instead seems.

There’s just no hard and fast rule at all.