Travel Alerts – 5 Great Resources To Stay Informed When Far From Home

When you’re traveling, it can be easy to get disconnected from current events and the news. And you may not realize that something may affect your travel plans until it’s too late. Fortunately, there are many tools out there to keep you informed. Here are our five favorites:

The RoamRight App

Of course we’re a bit partial to our own app. We’ve insured travelers throughout the world and we want to keep you safe and healthy on your trip. That’s why RoamRight customers can download the RoamRight app and receive alert notifications pushed to their phone or tablet. Rather than having to check a website or your email, your phone or tablet will notify you if there is a significant event in your destination – or within 100 miles of your current location.

Alerts include anything that may impact your travel plans: an outbreak like Chikungunya, Zika or Ebola, a workers strike that could affect transportation, a presidential election, and even more severe situations like rioting or terrorism. Each alert is useful in that it also provides a summary, and then providers more detail, background information, and advice on how to handle the situation.

There’s more to the RoamRight app than just travel alerts. Find out how else you can use this app when you’re away from home.

Download from the App Store ^SM , Google Play^TM , or the Amazon App Store.

SmartTraveler

The US Department of State has its own travel app “SmartTraveler.” From here, you can access the latest travel warnings (for long-term conditions) and travel alerts (for short-term conditions). You can also enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which allows you to create a trip and send your trip details to the nearest embassy or consulate to your destination. When you do this, you’ll receive important information from the Embassy about the safety conditions in your destination, as well as give the Embassy a method of contacting you if there is an event during your visit there.

Download from the App Storeor Google Play.

The Overseas Security Advisory Council

The Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) provides US State Department information to the private sector. It is another way to consume similar information as that provided in the SmartTraveler app. However, you’ll need to set up an account with OSAC. You can sign up for a free newsletter subscriber account on their website. When you do this, you’ll receive regular email travel alerts about events throughout the world.

Download from the App Storeor Google Play.

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) has an app that includes information about diseases and outbreaks around the world. You can read the latest details on a particular disease to understand how it may affect your travel plans.

Download from the App Storeor Google Play.

Facebook / Twitter / Other Social Media

Depending on your travel style, you may be paying attention to your social media accounts anyway. But these are some of the fastest ways to find out information. For example, during a tornado warning once, I was able to use Twitter to discover how far away the tornado actually was from my location because I was able to quickly check multiple references using Twitter's search feature and hashtags. All of this while the local news stations were simply reporting that a tornado had been sighted. Twitter allowed me to breathe a little sigh of relief that local news could not give me at the time.

What are your favorite ways to get the latest travel alerts while you’re on the road?

Note: Available plans and coverages may have changed since this blog was published.