Should You Stay Or Should You Go?

Travel advisories.  Some frequent travelers feel they’re overblown, while others use even the slightest hint of trouble to stay home with the shades drawn and covers pulled tightly over their heads.

I recently queried a number of people who travel often for both business and pleasure, and here’s their take on the subject:

• Sarah Fazendin of Denver — formerly the North American Marketing Manager for the Kenya Tourist Board — says that while she understands where the government is coming from in order to protect travelers, but in her experience, travel advisories tend to be political vs. practical.  “My husband and I went to Venezuela in 2000 in the heat of a travel ban from the U.S. State Department, and we had the time of our lives,” she said.  “In many countries, the local people totally understand and appreciate that tourism is vital to their economy, and they wouldn’t do anything to damage that.  In the event of a security threat for tourists, the amazing tour operators I worked with in Kenya made sure that any tourists were removed from harm’s way no matter of the expense.”

• “If I listened to travel advisories, I never would have gone to half the countries I’ve been to so far,” says travel writer Tim Leffel.  “They’re almost always overblown, and most people don’t take the time to research what’s really going on and how regional the problem is.  I just spent nearly two months in Mexico, and I didn’t see one act of violence or even hear about one in the areas where tourists spend their time.”

• Says Kat Kirsch of El Segundo, California: “You can be mugged, robbed or hurt in New York City just as easily as in Managua.  I think the travel advisories can be very overblown.  I started traveling to Nicaragua in 2001 and have been back two other times despite travel warnings, and even spent two months alone — gasp! as a 22-year-old white woman — in a rural community.”  She never had a problem.

• “Once the U.S. gives your country an advisory, that’s the kiss of death,” says New Yorker Laine Doss, who went on a honeymoon safari with her husband last November.  “There were absolutely no Americans. There were Germans and Brits, but no Americans.  We knew that there had been political unrest in Kenya, but that was all over with.”  Laine loved the experience so much that she left her job as promotions director at a radio station to help market the safari camps that she visited.  “It’s a daunting job, because the travel advisories really are a death sentence even though they are vague or only talk of an isolated area or a single incident,” she says.

Related posts:

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2. Travel to the U.S. from Visa Waiver Program countries