After a life full of working, raising kids, maintaining your home, and who knows what else, older adults deserve to travel and relax. You have nearly a life’s worth of experience, knowledge, and wisdom under your belt and can appreciate the sights more than your younger self would. However, senior tourists are also prime targets for thieves. So, how can you stay safe away from home?
Seniors are typically targeted for robbery, purse snatching, or pickpocketing – especially while on vacation. Seniors can get seriously injured during these altercations. Thieves will single out these elders because they typically have more money and valuables, are physically weaker, unsteady on their feet, or they can’t fight back.
Don’t let that scare you from traveling like you have always dreamed! There are plenty of ways you can keep yourself safe away from home and we are going to tell you how.
Keeping Traveling Seniors Safe Away From Home
You already have your plans in place, flight and reservations confirmed, and your itinerary set. Now it’s time to educate yourself on safety considerations for seniors while traveling so you can enjoy and protect yourself on your next trip.
Get Travel Insurance
Before you started booking hotel rooms and air flights, I hope you took the time to get some travel insurance. There are many things that can go wrong while traveling away from home. For seniors with pre-existing health conditions, that list can grow even longer.
Travel insurance is one way for seniors to stay safe away from home. There are many types of coverage available including medical coverage, pre-existing medical condition coverage, evacuation coverage, baggage coverage, and financial default coverage. These plans can protect you in case you have a medical emergency, you have to be evacuated for medical care, your tour or cruise is canceled, and more.
Don’t Announce Your Absence
Remember that seniors are often the targets of all sorts of scams, schemes, and crimes. When you are making hotel reservations, avoid ground floor rooms with window entry. That can make it easy for someone to break into your room. A room near an elevator has more foot traffic and will deter thieves.
When you are heading out of your room for the day, don’t hang your “Clean My Room” sign. This lets people know that you are out of the room and criminals may break in to steal your valuables or medications. Instead, when you are leaving, head to the front desk and let them know they can send someone up to clean your room.
Do Watch Your Eating Habits
When you are on vacation at a restaurant ordering something new to try, it can be easy to forget what you should and should not be eating. If you want to spend your vacation on vacation and not in your hotel room, mind your eating habits.
Stay away from anything heavy, spicy, or cheesy. If there are particular destination foods you want to try, ask your doctor about it before you go on your trip. Seniors often take many medications and some of those may have an adverse effect with certain foods. Before you leave, make sure you and your doctor discuss food-medication combinations to avoid.
Mind your Medications
There are a couple medication considerations to keep seniors safe away from home. If flying, never pack your medications in any checked luggage because luggage can be lost. Keep your meds in your carry-on luggage on the plane.
Don’t leave your medications lying around your hotel room. We all know how expensive prescription drugs are. They can easily be sold for even more money illegally; so don’t leave them out to tempt someone to take them.
Bring an extra day or two of your medication in case your flight back home gets delayed and you have to stay longer. Keep a list of your medications, the generic names for them, and the dosages in the case that you will need to find a doctor or pharmacy to replace them. If you are traveling to a foreign country, get the names of the medications in the language spoken there.
Don’t Be Too Flashy
A perk of getting older is usually having more money than you did when you younger. This allows you to buy nice things with the money you have worked so hard for. Unfortunately, having nice things like a gold watch, expensive handbag, or a pricey camera makes you an easy target for thieves.
I’m not telling you to wear rags while on vacation, but consider not getting too blingy. Don’t carry hoards of cash around either, as seniors are often targets for pickpockets. And if you have a smartphone, you can take some great pictures with that anyway.
Keep Someone in the Loop
When you are coming and going from the hotel or resort, make sure that someone knows your whereabouts. You can let the concierge know where you are going and what time to be back so if you are missing someone knows. If you do this, definitely stick to your schedule.
Keeping your phone on you at all times is one way to stay safe away from home. There are also apps you can download to your smartphone so you can check-in with a contact of your choice. There are also web-based services like Kitestring that check-in with you. They will send an alert to a pre-selected contact if you don’t respond. You can even set a check-in word so that if someone steals your phone, Kitestring will still send alerts.
One Foot In Front of the Other – Safely
As you should already know, seniors are at a higher risk for falls. While traveling, it is incredibly important to wear comfortable, flat shoes. You’re probably going to be walking around catching scenic views and doing some shopping. Even small heels can make a senior more susceptible to sprains or falls.
Wear comfortable shoes that you can make it through the day without hurting your feet or yourself. Protecting yourself is a major component to remaining safe away from home.
Bon Voyage!
Now that you know how to stay safe away from home, finish up your trip planning and go see the world. Know another senior that is planning to travel soon? Maybe you want to share these tips to help keep them safe too!
Do you have other safety tips you have picked up while traveling? We would love to hear them! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
