Family vacations are a fun and wonderful experience. However, it’s normal to be concerned about safety issues especially when traveling with children.

Here are a few tips to help ease your mind.

Airport Safety – Always keep an eye on your luggage and never leave it unattended. To avoid someone else picking up your carry-on bag, try not to place it on the conveyor belt until you’ve been security checked yourself and right about to walk through the metal detector. Once you put it on the conveyor belt keep a close eye on it.

Hotel Safety – Keep valuables in a safe and always know where your closest safety exits are in case of an emergency.

Road Safety – It’s a great experience to drive in another country but it can also be very stressful and even dangerous. Before your trip, get information on what driving is like in your destined country. Once there pay close attention to all road signs, if the signs are in a different language this will make things more difficult.

To avoid being detected as a ‘tourist,’ practice with your rental car controls and features before driving it. And don’t go out in a car with a rental-company logo on the bumper or windscreen, which automatically announces you as a tourist and makes you more vulnerable to attacks by thieves, and for this same reason make sure you don’t leave your maps, hotel documents and guidebooks in the car.

If it’s possible to roam your mobile phone in the country do it, and if not get one to use internationally; it will be useful especially in case of emergencies at your destination and for making contact with your base back home.

Sight-Seeing Safety – Always keep a close eye on your children. Children aren’t aware of the dangers around them and won’t act any different in unfamiliar surroundings. Place a safety card in your child’s pocket including your name, contact details and hotel information. You can also tape this information on a card directly on your child’s back or stomach under their clothes.

Don’t wear expensive jewelry or carry expensive bags, cameras or laptops and try not to appear as a tourist too often. Always, always keep a close eye on your bags. It’s a good idea to actually carry your cash, identification and credit cards in your pocket and not in your main bag.

Be especially careful with your bags when sitting down at restaurants. It’s a common scam for thieves to steal bags from right under someone’s seat when they’re dining and happily preoccupied chatting.

Stay on the main roads and near people at all times. Try not to wander down unfamiliar roads or alleys even if you’re tempted to find a short cut.

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