On the eve of the summer holidays, Belgium's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is encouraging citizens to better prepare for their trips and to register their time abroad.
For most people, going on holiday is a time of joy and relaxation but roughly a dozen travellers get into trouble every day when abroad and call upon the services of the ministry. With its latest campaign, the agency wants to proactively raise people's awareness to prevent these issues.
"We want to make Belgian travellers aware of what they should bear in mind before leaving on holiday. We have summed our advice up in six tips, which we will focus our campaign on," Wouter Poels, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told The Brussels Times.
Mapping situations abroad
The stand-out piece of advice is the request for people to register their trips abroad (the dates and places of their stay) on a website designed for this purpose. While not mandatory, this is strongly recommended.
"This is a secure database on which information is only stored until two weeks after people have returned. We ask travellers to register their stays abroad so that if something happens in this location, we immediately know who is staying there and we can map how many people would need help," Poels explained.
While many people do register their trips when going further afield, such as to Latin America or Africa, few consider it necessary for trips that are closer to home. "However, even when travelling to France or Portugal, this may be necessary, in light of for example the recent forest fires that have occurred here."
The five other tips cover checking the need for vaccinations, passports and visas to enter a country, the importance of travel insurance, as well as checking safety advice regarding the destination country.
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"These pages on our website include a lot of information that many people may not think to consider, such as the risk of a natural disaster taking place here, but also different customs and behaviours," Poels explained, adding that for example, travellers to Egypt are warned not to use drones, as this could result in jail time.
These pages also include risky regions in countries that are popular holiday destinations for Belgians.
