Take a look at our list of documents you should have handy when you set off on your travels.
Travel insurance
There are many reasons why getting travel insurance is a high priority when travelling. For one thing, we haven’t fully emerged from this Covid cloud hanging over our head, threatening to cancel any flight and take any hopes of traveling away in an instant. Travel insurance that covers cancellation due to Covid could save you a lot of money.
And then once you get there, anything could happen. You could fall ill and need medical cover. You could find your purse or baggage missing. Travel insurance will cover you for all of it. Take a look at the Staysure website for a good example of a travel insurance deal.
Passport
It shouldn’t need to be said you need your passport to exit and enter a country, but we’ll go over the finer details anyway.
Getting a valid passport is a long, long, arduous process, so get it done well in advance. You might need to get a new passport if you have less than 6 months left on your current one, you have to change the name on your passport, you’ve lost your current passport, or you have never applied for a passport before. As that renewal process on a passport going out of date might indicate, you should look into it about 6 months before you intend to leave. It’s unlikely to take that long, but it’s no good spending so much money on a holiday only to realise your passport is no longer valid. There is trouble brewing at UK airports because all their passports are going out of validity and no one realized until they were at the gate.
Hotel booking
I don’t know about you, but when I’m on the move, reading my phone is an instant headache. You have to look around 3x before what you’re reading sinks in, because you’re too busy thinking about everything else. Will my purse get stolen? Where are the best restaurants? What time is my flight? Did I pack everything? Where’s my hotel address?
For that purpose, you should print out your hotel booking. If you have to grab a bus or taxi, you’ll want to have the address handy, so you don’t end up across town.
Plus, if you were to arrive at the hotel and they said to you “there’s no booking under that name”, you can shake your printed hotel confirmation email in their face as proof and demand a room. There’s just something more tangible than paper. Showing them the email in their phone could mean you got it from anywhere.
Covid status
Well, this is the post-Covid world, here to stay and it requires some proof of your Covid status before you can travel internationally. Most countries, especially in the EU, are asking for one of two things: proof of vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test. However, other countries are stricter. For example, China is still using the lockdown defense against the transmission of Covid cases and have outright suspended flights going into the country. In the middle, New Zealand is very slowly opening its borders, and you will need to provide proof of vaccination, AND proof of a negative PDT test, and a document of travel history before arriving – and there’s more.
Check your country’s government website to check travel restrictions going out and make sure you have all the proof you need to be permitted to enter the country.
Vaccinations
Along the same lines, if you’re headed to a country that requires you to get a vaccination, like for yellow fever, polio, typhoid, and hepatitis A, you might need to present proof of these vaccinations to enter the country. This means you will need an International Certificate of Vaccination of Prophylaxis (ICVP) to get past security on the way to countries like India, the Maldives, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, etc.
What’s in your must-pack list?
