Travel Essentials: How to Make Your International Family Trip Safer?
Your family’s safety is non-negotiable when you are on an international trip. As a family with enough travel experience, we’ve also faced an occasion or two where we ran into safety threats. After that, we decided to book private jets for our international family trips.
Our travel calendar is quite fast-paced. Yet, safety has always been paramount for us. You need to be more clinical when you are travelling with your children. For me, transit has been the most troublesome part. First pickpocketing and then robbery. We’ve seen worse days on our travel.
Based on our experience, here are some hands-on tips for travelers.
The Simplest Ways of Safe Family Trips
These tips are non-exhaustive. But we felt that all families on international trips should follow these basics. Hence, these tips:
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Start by researching Your Destination Properly
The host government’s travel department is a good resource you can use. Start by researching your destination’s demographics. Now check your own state department’s website for travel tits bits on every country.
Most importantly, you will come across a security number ranging from 1 to 4. Here 4 refers to the high risk quotient of travelling to the country nd 1 the least.
But tour guidelines are not all. If you are also booking a private jet for travel, compare rates first. After that, check whether your company has the essential permits to fly to your destination locale. Meanwhile,
You can collect other essential details like embassy info, safety guidelines, passport, and vaccine requirements from the state department’s website.
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The STEP program can Help You!
STEP or Smart Traveler Enrollment Program is another State Service you can try. It is quintessential for all travellers who are planning to tag along with their family,
This program lets you enroll your details, itinerary, and the rest of your contact details. For example, your private jet provider’s contact, and other tour operators’ contacts, etc.
Whenever there are embassy alerts, the program will launch an investigation into your trip. It is a default shoot-off campaign that is aimed at ensuring your family is safe abroad.
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Packing Essentials and Tips
During international travel, we need to take out and produce our passports frequently. So, it is better if you keep a photocopy of the same.
Keep the photocopy separate from the real passport. As a family, we also take photos of each of our passports and mail each other. This is our way of preserving digital information about us that can be tracked with footprints and cache easily.
If any of our passports are lost or stolen, we can save our trip in this way. We have to visit our nearest embassy. With a photocopy, getting a duplicate passport is easier. For the best help, visit your own state department’s travel website.
Wait, we’re not done yet. From our experience, we can share a tip or two more. For example, we make sure that all of us are carrying at least some cash and at least one credit card.
How to manage your cash as a solo traveler?
The blog discusses family trip issues mainly. However, managing cash and credentials on a solo trip is also a big issue. For solo travelers, my tip is to keep aside one credit card and a stack of $5000 separate from everything else.
If you are travelling with a random group, follow this as a cardinal rule.
But you might ask, why do we need to follow this rule? Firstly, it ensures we can individually steer past basic problems on our trip when we have cash and our IDs. Secondly, we can still afford the trip or exit safely if our main stash is stolen.
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Beware of The Surroundings
The host country’s tourism website is a great source of information. When you scan the website, you will find a list of problematic areas that you should avoid as a foreign traveler. We do this as a mandate on any of our international family trips.
From my experience, I must say that it is better to be vigilant in heavily trafficked and congested places. We always avoid crowded places on our trips.
To begin with, there are numerous unsuspecting people around. But, with large bags, men can easily track and trace you as a tourist. Nothing is stopping you from being a soft target!
Lastly, never leave your wallet and phone unattended. And don’t trust locals if you don’t have enough reason to do so.
