Advice and Discontent

Feds' Travel Warnings Are Hit-and-Miss

On Oct. 24, the U.S. State Department posted the following advice on its Web site: "This Public Announcement is being issued to alert U.S. citizens traveling to and residing in Nicaragua to the potential for violent demonstrations leading up to the national election in Nicaragua on November 5, 2006. . . . demonstrations and sporadic acts of violence are possible in major cities throughout the country."

Yikes. Good to know, if Managua was in your fall travel plans. (Or even winter or spring travel plans; the notice doesn't expire until April 18.)

But Nicaraguan authorities quickly responded with their own observation about violent demonstrations in the country: There hadn't been any. Further, none was predicted.

"In relation to the upcoming elections taking place on November 5th, there have been no violent acts or demonstrations reported in Nicaragua and we do not expect them to take place," the Nicaragua Tourism Board said in a huffy press release.

"There has been absolutely no hostility or violence towards visitors to Nicaragua," Minister of Tourism Maria Rivas said in the release. "Nicaraguans welcome travelers now more than ever."

Sure enough, the election came and went peacefully, with no ugly mobs reported.

Welcome to the sometimes confusing, sometimes controversial world of State Department travel advice, a place where caution, politics and commerce all seem to vie for a place in your holiday planning. To some, State's travel guidance Web site, http://travel.state.gov/, is a godsend for uncertain tourists, a first stop when, say, your wife comes home with a brochure on rafting in Mongolia or your sophomore signs up for a semester in Kampala. The travel information there can tip you to everything from the ease of ATM use in Austria to the recent uptick in rapes of foreigners in East Timor.

But to others -- mainly dissed tourism commissions, uneasy travel agents and cocky hard-core travelers -- the department has a Nervous Nelly rep for too quickly turning a vague threat or an isolated holdup into a virtual nationwide blackball.

"In my experience, it's never as dangerous as they make it seem," said Bob Kalish, the owner of Central American Travel Exchange, a Denver-based tour operator. He keeps an eye on the government advisories to the region, including the caution on Nicaragua and a flurry of warnings two years ago about banditry in Guatemala. "I've sent 500 people down there, and none of them had any problem," Kalish said. "Overall, I think travel in Central America is safer than traveling in downtown D.C. or New York."

At worst, the warnings can bring some travel to an unnecessary halt, said Kevin O'Neill of Experiential Learning International, a nonprofit group that organizes volunteer trips to developing countries. Most universities won't set up exchange programs in countries that draw a State Department warning, even when students won't be anywhere near the trouble spot, he said. "The schools won't touch a country with a travel warning. We had a group of students who wanted to volunteer in Kenya over spring break this year. But their college said no, Kenya's on the list. I think Kenya's actually been quiet in recent years, but they can be very slow to give the green light again."

O'Neill also faced waves of cancellations a few years ago when the State Department made note of brewing political unrest in Nepal, even though his contacts on the ground assured him that the Katmandu Valley, where he was sending visitors, was reliably safe. (It was several years, O'Neill said, before Nepal's political crisis came to a head and his group issued its own warning to volunteers.)

State Department officials are fully aware they tread a narrow line between spooking travelers and presenting a complete picture of the risks they might face in the dicier parts of the world. Their job, they say, is to collect data from the embassies and let travelers, parents and schools make their own call. (Only two countries are legally off-limits to Americans: Cuba and North Korea. Otherwise, the government deals only in suggestions.)