Written by guest author, Jane Moore.

The last thing you want to think about while traveling on vacation is home, but some travelers find themselves caught in tricky situations when they receive bad news about their homes while on the road. Below, we consider some of the steps you can take to prevent problems at home while you’re away, and offer some tips for dealing with those issues.

1. Be Proactive About Protecting Your Home While on the Road

One of the best ways to handle problems at home while traveling is to take proactive steps to protect your home and your belongings well in advance of your departure. Chances are, you know and follow the basic rules of home safety while preparing to travel: install motion sensors on the exterior of your home or make sure existing ones are in working order, use timers on varied schedules to turn your lights on and off, ask a neighbor to keep an eye on your home and collect your mail and newspaper, and have a landscaper take care of mowing your grass or shoveling your driveway and sidewalks.

In this day and age, when there are hundreds of thousands of travel apps, travel bloggers, booking sites, websites and review platforms, it’s harder than ever to tell if the information you’re receiving is legitimate and unbiased. It can be difficult for the average vacationer to sift through sponsored content (which may skew a review) or know which post on tripadvisor is from a reliable source and not the brand planting a glowing review for their establishment. If you’re unsure of where to turn when researching vacations, let us help you sift through the bogus content and get the facts you need.

1. Are you seeing the same information across multiple websites?

If you see great reviews on a variety of sites, it’s safe to assume it’s a pretty good bet. It’s always a good sign if you see the same details brought up on different sites. But, people aren’t always honest and writers will sometimes take perks from companies without divulging such to their readers. Beware the glowing review on a travel blogger’s site when other travel writers hated it or TripAdvisor shows lots of negative feedback. So, do your research utilizing a bevy of sites to ensure you don’t get suckered by a well-paid writer. 

Traveling is an exciting part of life, but heading to an unfamiliar destination may be pushing the excitement too far for some people. When there’s familiarity, it’s easy to know where to begin your vacation planning. But how exactly do you travel to a place that you know nothing about? In this post, we’ll give you step by step instructions to assuage your traveling fears and make your next trip to places unknown a reality!

Step 1: Choose a Destination & Length of Stay

First, you’ll need to figure out what kind of vacation you’d like. Would you prefer to lounge on a beach chair soaking up the sun or are you dying to explore a cultural hot-spot? Do you want to have a thrilling time and knock items off of your bucket list or do you need to re-energize and rejuvenate? Once you decide on your vacation style, you should be able to narrow down your destination options. Minube is a fun app to try. It suggests destinations based on your mood and other factors. If you have a few places in mind, do google searches for “experiences” or “vacations” in your chosen destination cities for comparison.

When vacationing out in the great wide world, safety can be a concern, especially when traveling alone. But while traveling in a new city can seem scary, don’t ever give up on your dreams of visiting a particular city just because you’re feeling nervous about safety. There are precautions that you can take while on vacation to ensure that you’re as safe as possible. In order to help you feel more at ease, we’ve compiled the top seven travel safety tips to assuage any misgivings you may have.

1. Research your destination

Before you even book your trip, spend some time researching your destination. This is one of the best sites to check out before traveling: The State Department offers updated travel safety information on every country in the world. You can also read travel sites like tripadvisor.com to read other people’s experiences in particular areas to get an idea of what to expect. It’s also good to know where the closest police station is to your hotel, and research how to contact the local embassy just in case there’s a bigger issue.