5 Life-Saving Lessons the Special Forces have taught me For Travel Safety
Safety should be everyone’s number one priority, starting with accommodation.
I found myself thrown into the world of private security contractors and risk consultancy shortly after graduating from university. It’s an incredibly niche sector, primarily comprised of ex-military personnel exporting their expertise to the private sector.
Those who shift from the military to the private sector are a particular bunch. Often maintaining their intense physical training, equipped with extraordinary life-threatening experience, as well as business acumen, it was an eye-opener for a youngster like myself to peer into their world.
I was fortunate enough to be enrolled on the company’s hostile environment training course (H.E.A.T), designed to prepare clients with the skills and knowledge to operate in such terrains. Syria and Afghanistan aren’t at the top of my holiday tick list just yet, but I found almost everything I learned applicable to all types of travel, be it business or leisure.
We all know to scrunch our bags close to our bodies in town squares to fend off the pickpockets, or to covertly whip out Google Maps as the taxi driver takes you to your destination to check you haven’t been doing a few loops to add to their fare meter.
Accommodation is where we usually let our guards down. The place we relax and recuperate. But it can only be so with the necessary preparation and checks in place.
Here are 5 simple lessons related to accommodation that you can adopt to create a safer place to stay on your next holiday.
1: Check Communications
Upon arrival, check that the information of your contacts is accurate and that your equipment is working. Whether that’s the hotel landline, or your AirBnB host’s number, you want to avoid scrambling around looking for it should you suddenly find yourself lost or in an emergency.
After a long flight, you may feel starved of social media. Checking your apps immediately after purchasing your airport SIM is all well and good, but does the network now allow you to get in touch with your in-country contacts? Use the excuse of introducing yourself and that you have landed so that you can call the number and verify.
Unfortunately, we are seeing terrorist attacks occurring more and more in major cities today. Political instability can crop up with minimal notice. When providing our services to corporate executives in France and London, a fall-back plan for a terrorist incident was always made, despite the low possibility of it occurring as people often presume.
Your hotel is likely to be near a major transport line or tourist attraction, heightening the area’s risk level. Should anything break out, you should have already established a reliable way to communicate with others without having to endanger yourself by going out of your room.
2: Physical safety
What condition is the lock to your room in? We often take these things for granted, trusting the business to maintain these standards. But ultimately, only you are responsible for your own safety.
In less economically developed countries, it can be common to be given a padlock to the room. Can that be trusted? If you have a personal one yourself, should you use that instead to prevent unwanted visits when you are out?
If you are the more refined traveller among us, you probably booked a room with a balcony and view. Before you have your significant other frog squatting to get the right angle for your Instagram post, give the balcony door a good check. These are particularly easy entry points of apartments in places like Barcelona and Lisbon, where the architectural design of the buildings mean only a small waist-level fencing is separating your balcony from your neighbours’.
3. Walk the fire exits
Knowing where the fire exits are may sound obvious now, but how many times did you check them in the last three holiday accommodations you stayed in? Venice is unbelievably cramped with all its alleys and old builds. I remember going down the stairwell and hearing a slushing sound from next door. I opened the wooden hatch and saw water swishing back and forth in an entirely immersed floorboard with the odd planks sticking out. In a state of emergency, are you confident you know the way out to safety?
An important rule with fire exits is to learn how many doors are on your right when exiting your room until you reach the fire exit. Do the same for the left side.
The purpose of this is so that should the building be on fire and smoke plumes fill the corridors, you should be able to navigate your way out by counting the doors as you evacuate despite low visibility.
From my experience, smaller hotels are notorious for keeping exits blocked with room service trolleys. Should you spend the extra 2 minutes checking these, or are you going to leave it up to chance?
4. Visibility and Sound
Do not bother fumbling around with your iPhone when you need a light source. Reserve that for shining down the side of the bed when your chips fall down, or for plugging the TV cable behind the cabinet. Your every-day device is also prone to battery drains and technical faults. A small torch stored in your rucksack adds no significant weight yet can come in handy.
With that, a whistle is also an essential for me. It may sound slightly odd as your favourite YouTuber never took one out in their ‘What’s in my bag’ video, but it is another small piece of kit that has significant value. I’ve heard many stories of people landing in an unfamiliar country in the middle of the night, and being taken to their hostels in pitch black darkness. If you need to get someone’s attention, a whistle can greatly increase your safety.
5. Grab and go
Lastly, a grab bag is something you should get used to preparing when you are in your accommodation, and certainly before bed. Current fashion trend has popularised bum bags, or small chest bags, which are ideal for this, but any small bag you can quickly pick up works.
Place your essentials like money,contact details and form of ID in your grab bag along with your footwear close to the bed. The concept here is to be able to grab what you need and exit without wasting time.
All five of the tips outlined above have one fundamental theme running through them all — preparation. In a state of panic and confusion, be it a terrorist attack, electricity blackout or accident, you need to rely on pre-conditioned behaviours and existing knowledge to remain calm and collected.
Most of these discussed can be ticked off even before you go on holiday, and the rest require 20 minutes’ max to conduct upon arrival. Yet, all too often, we fall complacent or fear looking paranoid in front of friends and family to carry out these checks.
But as my ex-special force instructor repeated time and time again throughout the course, only you are responsible for your own safety.
