smartraveller.gov.au - Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
It's a must see destination.
It's a must see destination.
6. Make copies of your passport details, insurance policy, travellers cheques, visas and credit card numbers. Carry one copy in a separate place to the originals and leave a copy with someone at home.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's travel advice provides accurate, up-to-date information about the risks Australians might face overseas, enabling you to make well-informed decisions about whether, where and when to travel.
Over the course of 2005 we consulted with travellers and members of the travel industry on how to improve our travel advisories. We have now introduced a number of changes to the way our travel advice is written and presented.
These changes have been designed to:
While the changes make the travel advisories look and feel different, they do not mean that the risk level at different destinations has increased or decreased. We have not changed the way we assess the relative risk at any overseas destinations.
One important change is that we are now advising Australians to reconsider their need to travel to a particular destination rather than to defer non-essential travel as we did under the old system. This change aims to make it clearer that it is up to individual Australians to decide whether or not to travel, bearing in mind the kind of risks they might face. The change in wording does not indicate any change in our assessment of the level of risk.
More detailed information on the improvements being incorporated into our travel advice program is provided below.
To ensure the levels used within our travel advice system are as meaningful as possible, we have created a new, simple five level system. Our five new levels are as follows:
Our aim is to provide Australian travellers with a realistic understanding of the risks overseas, so they can make their own informed travel decisions in light of the potential risks. The wording of these new levels proved in focus testing to describe most clearly to travellers the relative level of risk. While we have made changes to the levels so they more accurately convey the risk at the destination, ultimately decisions about whether, where and when to travel can only be made by travellers themselves.
To help Australian travellers understand the relative setting of each travel advice and become more familiar with the levels, we have introduced a level continuum. This graphic table at the top of each travel advice allows users to immediately identify the level of their selected destination.
Some advisories have more than one continuum. This is because while the overall destination is at a certain level, different regions within the destination are assessed to be at higher or lower levels.
The continuum should help more Australians and the travel industry to become familiar with the different levels used and make it easier to quickly compare different destinations.
Many of our travel advisories mention specific areas in a country and provide special advice for those locations.
A simple map is now included with each advisory, to help travellers locate areas identified in the advice and plan their itinerary accordingly.
To make the key issues in each travel advice easier to identify, we have introduced dot point summaries. These summaries are written in the most direct and simple language possible, so travellers can quickly absorb key information.
We have also included three standard dot points in the summaries to encourage travellers to:
As we say in our smartraveller public information campaign - we want all Australians to be informed, safe, smart travellers.
We know Australians want travel advisories to be as clear as possible. That's why our new travel advisories are written in a more direct, less formal style. We have introduced new headings to help travellers locate information quickly. Our new travel advisories include sections on "Crime", "For Parents", "Local Travel" and "Where to Get Help".
While we have made changes to improve our travel advice service, we have not changed the way we manage our travel advice program.
We continue to review our travel advice for each of our 152 destinations at least quarterly, or more often if required.
In preparing travel advice we continue to factor in the advice of staff at our Australian missions, our experience of the common or recurring consular problems Australians are experiencing overseas, threat assessments provided by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the advisories prepared by our consular partners (United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada) although we may reach different conclusions.
The Department's travel advice is designed to be consulted as part of your routine travel preparations. It is not intended to be a running news service or provide "all a traveller needs to know" about a particular destination. Although we consistently work to make our travel advisories more user-friendly, we will not try to provide a guide book style service.
An important principle behind our work remains that the advice we provide to the public is no different to the advice we provide to our own staff, to other government agencies or to the private sector. The only travel advice we produce is the official advice which is publicly available on the smartraveller website. If you ring the Department, we will not be able to add to the advice that is published on the internet. Our travel is our most up-to-date advice and we cannot, and should not, predict what will happen in the future.
This information is also available in portable document format (PDF, 518 KB)
Foreign Minister's media Release at the introduction of the revised advisories: Clearer, Simpler Travel Advice, 8 November 2005