State Department gives guidelines on adventure

The State Department, hoping to reduce danger for what it says is an increasing number of Americans seeking riskier adventures abroad, has added new elements to its travel.state.gov pages about international tourism safety and adventure travel. Those include country-bycountry safety and security information about tourism infrastructure and emergency services, along with broader safety advice on adventure travel worldwide.

The “safety and security” section on the department’s Mexico page, for instance, notes that the country’s emergency phone number is 911 (as in the U.S.), and that “it is best to seek the assistance of a Spanish speaker to place the call.” The Canada page notes that Canada also uses 911 for emergency calls and said the country “generally has a lower crime rate than the United States.” National Travel and Tourism Office statistics show Americans made 93 million trips to foreign countries in 2018, up 6.3% from the year before. Travel beyond North America was up 9%, amounting to 41.8 million trips. The changes were not prompted by any particular cases but by the growing number of Americans traveling abroad and the increasing popularity of “water sports and bungee jumping and that sort of thing,” a senior State Department official said.

Travel industry analysts have frequently cited adventure travel as a fast-growing niche in recent years. For many years, road accidents and drownings have been among the leading causes of death among Americans abroad, the State Department said.