Preventive Safety Travel Tips

When it comes to travel, it makes one excited. However, holiday joys may turn into anxiety should you fail to take preventive safety travel measures. Here are some of my personal safety preventive ways to share.

Buying Travel Insurance 

Before that, I do need to emphasize the importance of buying travel insurance even though it maybe a short trip. My personal policy would be as long as you need to use your passport, always buy a travel insurance. Should you travel more than on average 5 times a year, it will be more worthwhile to buy annual travel insurance and ensure it cover the countries where you plan to go. For more tips on the purchase of travel insurance, you can find the post here written some time back.

Precautionary Safety Tips before Leaving Home 

#1: Ensure you have at least 2 copies of your itinerary, hotel confirmation number & address, flight tickets detail. Keep 1 copy in your bag while the other copy is to be left at home. Note down the hotel contact number or even the tour company contact number for emergency case. Beside having hard copy, you can email the details to your loved one and own email address. Come on, an additional email will not literally kill you but goes a long way to save or assist you in times of crisis when overseas. DO NOT share your full itinerary to a new found friend that you had just made your intended holiday destination. They may not be your friends after all, always be wary.

#2: Carry only 1 credit card during travel. You are not in your home country so you need not carry all the different bank credit cards. We know you are rich thus you can travel. But you just need 1 credit card which you can spend, leave the rest at home. The less credit card you have on your travel, the less hassle required to contact the bank should you lose it overseas. Keep a copy of the overseas emergency number of the bank credit card which enables you to cancel the card immediately when its lost. This number would have to be kept separate from the wallet, preferably in your bag pack.

Do not be an easy target for thieves (During Travel) 

#1: Counting of money. Never count your cash openly, you are only inviting people to rob you. Always ensure your money is kept in at least 2 different areas. One would be in your wallet while the other could be in your bag. Do not attempt to split your money to be kept in more than 3 areas too as in the end, you will be confuse where you keep the money and who knows, you may conveniently throw the notes away.

#2: Do not be over-friendly with locals. You can engage in small talks but do be wary. Be vigilant especially at train stations, bus stations, airport, night market, bazaar, etc. When at crowded areas, always carry your bag by having it hang in front of your body. Ensure one pockets are deep and your wallet is safe there. Hold one hand on your bag while the other hand repeatedly touch your pocket ensuring wallet is there. Make it a habit to do it frequently. If is too crowded at the site, step back a little and wait for the crowd to reduce if possible. You do not need to over panic when someone bang onto you, but your safety instinct have to be spring into action by ensuring your belongings are still with you.

#3: Carry photocopy of your passport. Leave the original in the hotel safe deposit. Should the hotel do not have a safe deposit, you may leave it in your luggage and locked it. It is certainly not advisable to carry your passport during your visits to tourist attractions.

#4: Do not open the hotel room immediately when people knock on your hotel room door. You have the right to not allow anyone even hotel staff to enter. Always look at the door peephole to screen visitors and check with them what is their reason of entering your room. If unsure, call the lobby reception first. Should there be any maintenance work needed, hotel staff would choose to do it after the visitor had check-out of the rooms. Be alert!

#5: Safety doesn’t only relate to money. It also includes your knowledge of escaping the hotel room during emergency time like fire or natural disaster (E.g. Earthquake). Yes, I know you might be saying if it is Earthquake, one might not have the time to even escape. But when it comes to such time, people usually panic. And by knowing your escape route, you increase your own chances of survival. One of the first thing I do when I start to unpack in the hotel room is to ensure I have a torchlight at my bed side. During emergency, there is often a blackout. Torchlight comes in handy. Next, when you close the hotel door, there is usually an emergency route plan showing you the nearest exit. Familiarize  yourself to the nearest stairway, it only takes less than a minute to do so but it could save your life.

Prevent Missing Luggage 

Most of the time, we could not do anything further to prevent our luggage from going missing when we check-in at the airport. The fault would mostly lies with the airline should our luggage goes missing. However, one can decrease the probability of it getting lost.

Rule #1: Check-in early at the airline counter. Do not be the last few to arrive at the airport as airline may not have the time to get your luggage to the aircraft. Most of the time, airline counter would close roughly 30-45 mins before the plane depart. If the flight is full and the total weight capacity exceed the safety limit for lift off, airline would choose to offload the last few luggage. Yes, airline will ensure your bags arrive at your intended destination but you would have to go through the trouble and worries before you could see your luggage.

Rule #2: When checking in at airport counter, ensure the luggage tag number that you are holding is the same as the one tagged to your luggage. Should there be any discrepancies, this tag number would come in handy to locate and search for the bag at both the origin and destination airport. One have to also ensure the tag does not gets torn off easily and final destination, flight number, can be seen clearly to prevent airport employees/machine from sorting it wrongly.

Rule #3: When it comes to purchasing of luggage, always chose the unusual colour for easier identification. Add a colorful unique sticker or simply a ribbon at time to identify your bag easily. This would allow one to describe the bag characteristics should you lost it.

I had previously shared on Travel Precautionary Tips (10 common tricks that you may encounter during overseas). Read more at here.

Last but not least, happy travel! Continue to travel, no country in this world is safe. But you can reduce the possibility of being a victim thou of course, incidents do happen.

Categories: Travel Tips