Is it safe to travel? An honest answer from someone who does it constantly

My aunt asks me this every time I tell her I’m going somewhere new.

“But is it safe?”

I went to Morocco. “But is it safe?” I went to Colombia. “But is it safe?” I went to Japan and she was fine about Japan, presumably because Japan has a marketing department, but she was worried about Taiwan and I was never entirely sure why.

The honest answer to “is it safe to travel?” is: it depends on where, what your baseline is, and how you define safe. Everywhere has risk. Your home city has risk. The question is whether the risk is manageable and proportionate, and the answer for most destinations most people want to visit is yes.

Here’s a more useful framework than just “yes” or “no.”

How to actually assess risk before you go

Government travel advisories

Every country publishes official travel advisories for its citizens. The UK’s FCDO, the US State Department, and the Australian DFAT are the most useful ones in English.

These are worth reading but need calibration. Government advisories are conservative by design. They tend to say “exercise increased caution” for places that are, in practice, visited by millions of tourists without incident. “Do not travel” is serious. “Exercise normal precautions” is basically fine. “Reconsider your need to travel” is worth reading carefully but not automatically a dealbreaker.

Read the specific advice within the advisory, not just the headline level. A country might have an advisory level that sounds alarming but the specific recommendation might be: avoid a specific region in the north. If you’re going to the southern coast, that’s relevant context, not a reason to cancel.

Actual news for the destination

Google News for the country and city you’re visiting. Look for what’s actually happening right now. Crime trends, political instability, anything in the last three to six months.

Ask people who’ve been recently

Reddit travel communities (r/travel, plus country-specific subreddits) are useful for current, ground-level information. Someone who was there last month knows more about the practical situation than any advisory written six months ago.

Nomad communities

If you’re going somewhere popular with travelers, Nomad List, Facebook travel groups, and TripAdvisor forums have recent first-person accounts. The signal-to-noise ratio is imperfect but the specificity is useful.

The things that actually make a difference

This is the practical section. Not fear management, just risk management.

Travel insurance

This should be the first item on every safety preparation list. Travel insurance covers medical emergencies (the most common and expensive travel crisis), medical evacuation, trip cancellation, stolen possessions, and in some policies, personal liability.

The key things to check: does it cover the activities you’re doing (some policies exclude adventure sports, check your definitions), does it cover medical evacuation, what’s the claim procedure, and what’s the excess.

Get it before you leave. Not from the airport desk. From a comparison site or directly from a reputable insurer. And actually read what it covers.

Know where your embassy is

Not something most people do until they need it and then it’s a frantic Google from a difficult situation. Know the address of your home country’s embassy or consulate in the capital. Know the emergency number.

For extended stays or trips to higher-risk areas, register with your embassy through their online system. It’s free, takes five minutes, and means they can contact you if something significant happens.

Communication

Being unreachable in a foreign country is not a safety risk in itself. Being unreachable AND having something go wrong compounds every problem. Make sure you have: a charged phone, working data or a local SIM, and at least one person at home who knows your rough itinerary and when to expect to hear from you.

An eSIM that you activate before landing means you have working connectivity from the moment you arrive, without standing around outside the airport trying to find a SIM shop while your phone has no signal. Small thing, genuinely makes arrivals much calmer. I cover the eSIM setup in detail here: how to use your phone abroad.

Cash backup

A separate stash of USD or EUR (widely accepted globally) in your bag, not your wallet. If your card stops working, you get robbed, or you find yourself in a cash-only situation, this is your backup. Not a huge amount. Enough for a night’s accommodation and transport.

Copies of everything

Passport photo page, insurance documents, hotel booking confirmations with addresses. Accessible offline. This means in a note or photo on your phone that you can open without internet, not just an email in your Gmail.

Country-specific safety: what actually varies

Crime, scams, and safety risks differ significantly by destination, and conflating them makes for bad decisions in both directions.

Petty theft and scams

Pick-pocketing exists everywhere there are tourists and crowded spaces. Rome, Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam have significant pick-pocket problems by European standards. Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and many South American cities require basic vigilance.

The prevention is consistent: don’t keep your phone visible in crowded areas, don’t keep everything valuable in one pocket, use a bag that closes properly over your body rather than a casual tote. This isn’t paranoia, it’s baseline sensible behavior in any dense urban environment.

Scams cluster around tourist sites, transport hubs, and entry points. The taxi that doesn’t use a meter and charges ten times the legitimate rate. The “closed today” someone who redirects you to a friend’s shop. The overly enthusiastic helper who carries your bag and expects payment. Research the specific scams common at your destination before you go. They repeat themselves across years and anyone who’s been there recently will have documented them.

Personal safety and crime

The personal safety risk in most tourist-frequented areas of most countries is low. The areas where it isn’t low are usually identifiable and avoidable.

Don’t walk alone at night in unfamiliar neighborhoods of any city, including cities in your home country. Use ride-share apps rather than hailing unmarked cabs in cities where this is standard advice (most of South America, parts of Africa and Southeast Asia). Keep your phone out of sight in crowded areas.

For solo travelers, particularly solo female travelers: the safety calculus is different in different places and it’s worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. I covered this properly in my solo female travel guide.

Health risks

These often get less attention than crime and deserve more. Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South and Southeast Asia, and Central America. Yellow fever in parts of Africa and South America. Dengue fever in tropical regions. Water and food safety varying enormously by country.

Research the specific health requirements for your destination before you go. The CDC and WHO travel health pages are the authoritative source. Vaccinations take weeks to become effective; don’t leave this until a week before departure.

The risk comparison nobody does but should

People fly. People drive. People eat street food. People go to concerts. All of these have risks and none of them makes the news when they go without incident.

Traveling internationally, with reasonable preparation, to a destination that isn’t in active conflict or experiencing a natural disaster: the risk level is comparable to many activities people do without thinking about it. The reason it feels more dangerous is partly unfamiliarity, partly media coverage, and partly the very human tendency to weight foreign risks more heavily than familiar ones.

This is not to say there’s no risk. There is always some risk. It’s to say that the risk is manageable, the preparation is relatively simple, and the vast majority of trips to the vast majority of places go exactly as planned.

Go. Prepare properly. Stay aware of your surroundings the same way you would at home. And know where your embassy is.

The one thing

If I had to reduce all of this to one instruction:

Buy travel insurance and actually read what it covers.

Everything else is useful. That one is essential. The medical evacuation cost from somewhere remote, the hospital bill from somewhere without public healthcare for foreigners, the lost flights and accommodation from a trip-ending illness: travel insurance turns these from catastrophes into inconveniences.

It’s not pessimism to have it. It’s the sensible thing to do before anything else on this list.

My aunt is not going to agree with any of this. But she’s also never been to Morocco.