How to Keep Safe While Traveling

Do you know how to keep yourself safe while traveling? Whether you travel for work or pleasure, implementing a few simple steps can reduce your risk of being targeted.

Google “tourist attacked”, and you’ll find 16,500,000 results. Articles and videos that recount violent attacks on tourists. And MANY of those attacks happened right here in the US. 

Whether abroad, or in the US, travelers face safety risks:

•  Kidnappings
•  Sexual assault 
•  Robbery 
•  Killings 

I spent 30 plus years working and traveling in some pretty dangerous places. Safety was a critical part of my focus when doing so. It had to be. It was my job to help people going through difficult situations, and if I couldn’t keep safe, my work would not get done.

I’ve put together a FREE guide full of safety tips based upon the practices I developed while working in unfamiliar and unsafe places. These tips kept me safe. And they will do so for you. Download it here.

Safety Fundamentals

When traveling, it’s important to focus on your safety fundamentals. Keeping safe requires being mindful of your own limits. It’s not cookie cutter, and it’s not about adopting approaches beyond your own abilities. 

As cool as it might be to have them, to keep safe while traveling doesn’t require those “special skills” possessed by Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) in the movie Taken.

Where you are traveling does matter too since every place is different. And so too are the risks to your safety.

Several years back, I provided personal safety training to a legally blind woman preparing to travel to China. Her sight limitations presented a major safety challenge for her. And the white cane she used to navigate around places marked her as an easy target. 

I devised a safety approach for her to use while traveling that recognized her unique challenges as well as her strengths. She implemented what she learned during our training, and had a great trip.

So let’s look at what matters most to keep yourself safe during travel.

Don’t Leave Your Common Sense at Home

Especially when traveling for fun, it’s critical that you not leave your common sense at home. Vacations lead to a mindset change. After all, you’re traveling to have fun, relaxation, and enjoyment.

It’s easy to drop your guard when you’re having fun. After all, being vigilance takes conscious work. That is, until you pattern it and make it automatic then it’s easy peasy.

Situational awareness is the awareness of the environment around you and the people within it. It’s the people in your surroundings that present the risk to your safety. Not the places themselves.

So when it comes to safety while traveling be aware of the people around you. Ask yourself:

•  How far away are they from you?
•  Who’s around you? Individuals? Small groups? Larger crowds?
•  Are they in front of you? Off to your side? Or behind you?
•  Can they impede your movement easily? If they do impede your movement, what alternatives do you have?

The best time to start conditioning yourself to think this way is to practice BEFORE you travel. 

Here’s how: Describe to yourself what you see as you go about your day. You can even video a location with your phone and narrate what you SEE AND HEAR. Then you can compare what you describe with what the video shows. This is the BEST WAY to condition your brain to recognize a risk and alert you to it.

You’ll need to be able to apply this awareness when outdoors at tourist attractions, and when you are indoors at restaurants, bars, and hotels. So practice both indoors and outdoors to be comfortable incorporating situational awareness wherever you are.

This is by far the most important practice to enhance your safety while traveling. So even if you don’t do anything else, this practice will help you to be safe while traveling in most situations.

It’s Not Just People On Foot Who Present a Risk to Your Safety. People in Vehicles Can Be a Threat Too.

When outdoors, your safety entails thinking about people in vehicles. Vehicles can be used as a base from which to watch and follow you. They can serve as a means to grab you and transport you away. And, vehicles can also be used as a weapon.

While traveling, you should treat approaching vehicles as a potential safety concern. Americans are targets of ransom schemes. Stereotypes abound that Americans who travel are wealthy, and their families will pay handsomely for their return if they are kidnapped.

It’s doubtful that you’ll be the subject of an elaborate kidnap plot. It’s more likely that you’ll just be in wrong place at the wrong time.

And that’s why your awareness of the people in vehicles around you matters.

Whenever possible, it’s best to walk AGAINST the flow of vehicle traffic. Even if you have to cross the street in order to do it.

Why?

Because you can see a vehicle as it approaches you. You’ll have the ability to see a vehicle pull to a stop and a person jump out. If you walk with the flow of traffic, a vehicle can literally pull up directly behind you.

And if you walk against the flow of traffic, you’ll gain distance with each step you take should someone drive past you and then stop.

Vehicles can be a weapon. Ramming into a crowd of people including those on a side walk happen with some frequency. 

Often it is the sound of acceleration that is your first clue that there’s a problem. And getting safely out of the way requires advanced notice.

So listen for the sound of a vehicle accelerating, and if you hear it, look to see where that sound is coming from. You can also see a vehicle accelerate due to the front of the vehicle rising slightly under sudden acceleration.

Once you’ve spotted the vehicle figure out if it’s headed your way, and if so get out of the way. Climb onto another vehicle if you must, but get out of the way.

Often when traveling you’re dealing with throngs of people. There may be some form of security, whether private, or local law enforcement at some of the locations, but relying on them to keep yourself safe is a mistake you can’t afford to make.

Your ability to keep yourself safe while enjoying the life you want to live is within your control. Download my FREE guide of easy to implement personal safety tips. You’re worth it!