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Why is Travel Safety Important?
October 16, 2020
Travelling abroad is a lifetime goal for many students, as much as it is a prerequisite for an enormous amount of employees working for national and international corporations. While on the surface, the idea of travelling to a foreign country is enticing, the reality is that people are still vulnerable to potential crimes and travel safety risks.
If you are not adequately prepared (physically and mentally), and do not seek the right travel advice before your trip, you may find yourself more exposed to crimes and hostilities. This is why it’s vital you take travel awareness seriously.
What is Travel Safety?
Travel safety and security refers to the physical, mental and situational awareness you should adopt while in a different country.
The reality is that while some countries have a very low travel risk, or none at all, there is still a chance that something bad might happen. Crime invariably poses an issue, and in particularly hostile environments (where social or political unrest is prevalent) the chances may be higher. The fact remains that regardless of your perception of potential travel safety risks, you should always ensure you are prepared.
That’s why companies, whose employees are expected to take international travel trips regularly, should ensure that they protect all people who represent their organisation, as much as possible.
Business Travel Safety
While it’s difficult to guarantee all workers will remain 100% safe while abroad, the first step in improving their personal safety is by enhancing their travel awareness.
If you’re a company that is responsible for deploying workers overseas, you should review everything possible to ensure your employees are in good hands, and they avoid dangers, hostilities and risk where possible. This starts by learning the principles of situation awareness.
Situational awareness is a commonly-adopted practice by those who frequently visit hostile environments, either as part of regular business travel or overseas law enforcement or military operations. Situational awareness training begins by establishing where you are, and assessing what types of risks exist around you, and anticipating what could potentially happen. With ATR, we incorporate themes of situational awareness in and amongst all of our training courses, as the practice can be integrated into numerous courses which require realistic scenario-based training.
It’s no different in travel safety and awareness. Being able to assess all types of risks that exist around you is the first step to becoming more travel safe.
Many people find it difficult to determine what these real risks are, compared to people’s perceptions of risk. We have outlined some common types of risks you may experience while abroad.
Risks of Travelling
- Accidents
- Illnesses
- Pickpocketing
- Robberies or assaults
- Loss of items
- Travel scams
- Kidnapping
- Road traffic accidents
- Terrorism
The above is just a small list of potential risks you can encounter while travelling abroad. Although it might seem unlikely you become caught in an incident like the above, if you anticipate and appreciate that they exist, you are consciously improving your chances of avoiding them. It’s crucial that you read up as much as you can about the area you’re travelling to, and read about common business travel safety tips. Doing so will ensure you’re more likely to enjoy safe travels.
How to Stay Safe While Travelling
Companies that send employees on ad-hoc or regular business travel excursions must validate that it’s safe to do so. The benefits of travelling should always outweigh the risks.
Companies should endeavour to carry out a risk assessment, which considers:
- What is the risk level of the destination country?
- What is the risk profile of the traveller?
One of the most important travel safety products you can take with you is a full, working travel first aid kit. These are essential if you succumb to an unexpected injury and you are in a position where medical assistance is going to take longer than you anticipate.
However, travel first aid kits might not protect you from potential kidnapping or scams. How can you ensure you are physically and mentally equipped to deal with these (albeit unlikely) events?
The answer is simple: thorough, extensive travel awareness training.
Travel Safety Training
If you want to educate your travellers about the dangers, risks and threats they may face while abroad, using scenario-based exercises, then you should consider travel awareness training.
Not only will delegates learn about how to mitigate risks before and during their travels, but they’ll learn how to respond effectively in the event of an emergency, as well as anticipating various scenarios.
It also pays dividends to learn basic self-defence training and first aid training, all of which we offer here at ATR. We can structure bespoke training courses to meet your requirements.
To find out more, please enquire here.
While our course directors will work diligently to ensure you are physically and mentally prepared, we will use a variety of scenario-based training exercises to help you assess your situational awareness. This is what we incorporate into all courses, whether it’s first aid training, travel safety and awareness or lone worker training.
To find out more about our upcoming SIA Close Protection courses, get in touch with us directly.
ATR are not just specialist training and service providers, but for organisations & individuals that require authorised travel safety equipment, we have products available via our shop.
