NB: This is a guest article by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.
The UK government’s Foreign Office is testing a new online “Traffic Light” system for travel advice – but it does not go far enough.
The idea has already proven controversial with Iraq appearing, at first glance, as dangerous as Thailand.
But rather that sit on the sidelines, after triggering some of the debate around the issue in an earlier article for Tnooz [How governments can improve travel safety alerts through technology and social media], I thought it might be more constructive to design a perfect online travel alert.
First of all, the official test version looks a bit muddled (slightly confusing messages for Thailand, for example):
Here’s my (admittedly, very poorly designed) wireframe alternative:
Here is an outline of all the elements I have included in the new design:
1. Can you travel?
“Yes” or “No” – two colours, green or red, very simple.
2. How dangerous?
This is probably the most controversial of my proposals, but possibly the most important.
In the words of the FCO:
“The ‘don’t go to’ list of countries is broken down as follows: where we advise against all travel to the country; where we advise against all travel to parts of a country; where we advise against all but essential travel to a country and where we advise against all but essential travel to parts of a country.”
Well I think the problem is in that breakdown. The new “Traffic Lights” system has thrown up some anomalies, such as Iraq appearing as dangerous as Thailand, but I believe a scale judging a country’s “dangerousness” from one to ten would be a lot easier to read.
Every number could be defined, transparent and relevant.
For example:
- Sweden
- Dubai
- USA
- Russia
- Indonesia
- Thailand
- Iran
- Pakistan
- Afghanistan
- Yemen
And although I like the idea of the Lodge Scale™, I do believe that we should call this the Hague Scale™ – it might have a better chance of being adopted, being named after the UK’s foreign secretary William Hague.
3. Latest news
Important news stories up front and centre, above the fold.
4. Maps
I think everyone thinks maps would be a good idea. At the moment there is one on travel advice to Kenya. As guide book author Richard Trillo said on Twitter whilst discussing the latest Kenya advice:
“@FCOtravel know you’re underfunded – but there needs to be a map for every country”.
He’s right. The real reason to get maps is that it’s important to highlight regional issues within a country. Very important for the local economy
But as anyone who has ever designed a site knows maps can be expensive to design and update. Does anyone have experience on decent map programmes? Or maybe Google or Bing Maps might be willing to lend expertise?
5. Advice
It’s there already. Just make it more accessible.
6. Twitter
It gets updated automatically. Keep it on the site. Useful and keeps the page fresh.
7. Facebook
Good way of sharing information for international tourists and travellers. Maybe alternate with FCO YouTube videos (which can be excellent).
8. News and tips
FCO advice can sometimes be too technical, and the new and ephemeral can often drown out the important. For example, folks not using helmets on scooters in Thailand is a major issue. Let’s highlight that.
9. Changes
Flag up recent changes. Can be linked into the database. Not that difficult
10. Contact
Do you know what, there’s actually a lot of good content on the FCO Travel site, intelligently thought out. Keep it. Just maybe rearrange it a little.
These is just my ideas. Anyone have anything else they’d rather see added or removed? Please comment below…
NB: This is a guest article by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.
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About Special Nodes
Interesting reading and obviously a very high level view. Foreign Offices are deffinetly a relevant risk information channel and any improvement in their communication is welcome. However different target groups needs to be considered and to main ones are ‘consumers’ (using the above) and ‘corporates’. Corporates needs more sophisticated platforms to manage ‘traveller and expat risk’ i.e. they might have their own risk profile of a country again based on the kind of actvities they perform in the country. There is a lot of good companies out there that offer this kind of service. Questions to be asked by corporates are ‘data quality’ including import capabilities i.e. frequence to provide real life display of travellers/expats and automatic reporting of impacted travellers, and ‘qualitative and relevant content’ and how this is obtained and provided.
How could governmental advice be really useful? If the individual changes to advice were tracked over time, and applied at the proper geographical level down to the city. If that activity was performed on all governments (AU, CA, NZ, UK, US). If that information was communicated to travellers based upon their itinerary. If the alerts also combined health information (CDC, WHO etc.), natural disaster and weather (NHC, StormRisk, etc.) as well as breaking news (NYTimes, AlJazeera, etc.). Sound like a good idea? We are in beta, drop by – TripSentry.com.
Cheers guys.
@Ole Agreed there needs to be different advice for consumers and corporates. However both can fall pray to the same issues and a lot of corporate advice can come through security companies like Control Risk and specialist insurance cos.
@Brian Will check out. To be fair to the FCO they seem. to me, to be out ahead of their peers on this debate.
It is always dangerous to oversimplify information, but I think
a. The advice can be better presented
b. As I said above “the new can often drown out the important”
We’ll see.
ps. As Nathan Midgely also said on Twitter yesterday
“Govt pushes for multiple traffic lights on food – salt, sug etc. Crisps get more complex alerts than countries.”
How we get that very complexity [of Travel Alerts] presented better, is the core of the issue.
I agree with Ole Bo, alerts are fine for general travel risk decision-making consideration. Saber Teams LLC is a global security and intelligence agency that provides true Comprehensive Travel Advisory and Tracking Security Services. This service was developed as a protective and preventative measure for diplomats and executives under our protection. Due to the overwhelming number of manmade incidents and natural disasters that easily take lives and require outside intervention, we have expanded our preventative and pre-emptive intelligence services to include other than Saber Teams clients, personnel, and affiliates.
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Very interesting Stuart, and thanks for pursuing this. I think the real issue is that the FCO has saddled itself with the job of advising green, amber or red for every location in the world and not just at country level which is far too crude, but down to specific locations, even within cities. With a map for every country, if they could afford to do them (and it’s not a fortune, if a travel publisher can draw maps surely the FCO could have a little budget for the purpose) then, with mouse-over info on those different colours, as I think Matthew’s suggesting, all would be clearer. At present, the map appears to be used where there’s a critical issue to do with safety and/or the size of the market reading the advice and/or the noise of the lobby asking for better info. And there are issues of consistency across borders (see Mauritania, Senegal and Mali) and within the traffic light system compared with the text advice.
It’s interesting to see the security industry taking an interest. The value of that business, however, and the inevitable trend to greater and greater insurable risks means there are major vested interests allied with continued danger and insecurity. In South Africa, for example, the Johannesburg CBD will never be safe in the eyes of South African security companies (and most South Africans seem prepared to accept that). So, alongside advice, I’d like to see the FCO publishing truly transparent statistics and details about all recorded incidents befalling Brits abroad (those that come to the attention of consular services, at least). Their annual “behaviour abroad” press release isn’t nearly enough. Last year, I managed to get them to release much more information about deaths abroad in Africa, which I’m particularly interested in. More info here: http://firsttimeafrica.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/british-tourist-visitor-and-resident-deaths-in-africa-325-people-in-12-months-out-of-more-than-3-million-british-visitors/
Many thanks for all of your comments. I’m from the travel advice team at the FCO and have responded below to some of the issues raised. I hope the bullet point format is OK; there were quite a lot of points to answer. As always I really appreciate the feedback and hope you will continue to let us have your comments.
- our travel advice reflects the level of risk to British nationals; we do not allow it to be influenced by political/trade considerations. We do not use our travel advice to convey messages to host Governments.
- we do try to make sure the most important info is highlighted in the travel summary at the top of each page.
- in the case of non-terrorist related threats our policy is to advise against travel when we consider the risk to British nationals to be unacceptably high. In the case of terrorism related threats, we advise against travel only when the threat is sufficiently specific, large-scale or endemic to affect British nationals severely (this policy derives from public scrutiny of FCO travel advice following the Bali bombings).
- there is a fine line between advice against all but essential travel and advice against all travel. Each situation is considered on its merits, but we do aim to achieve consistency in the way this is applied across the whole travel advice piece.
- there remains a clear demand from the public for travel advice and not just information; we get a great deal of correspondence asking us ‘is it safe to travel? ‘ and ‘should I go?’ etc. The question ‘can I travel?’ is not really appropriate as we don’t (nor can we) stop people from travelling.
- we recognise and understand the effect that FCO advice against all or all but essential travel can have on insurance cover. All decisions to advise against travel (or remove such advice) are therefore taken particularly seriously and always at Ministerial level. We have not invited the travel insurance industry to use the FCO travel advice as a reference point in their policies.
- with regard to the graphical device we have introduced at the top of each travel advice page, we faced a number of difficulties in terms of space; there are also rules on font size (many people find small font impossible to read). I therefore had to cut back on the number of words I could use.
- if the traffic light colours are not helpful, we could consider colouring each box in the same neutral colour (e.g. grey or dark blue)?
- it would be wrong to make judgements about the relative level of risk in different countries just by looking at the graphical device.
- the message on maps is coming through loud and clear; there is a clear demand for more. There are several new ones in the pipeline and we’ll try to add more as resources permit.
- I’m not sure the proposed 1-10 safety scale would be more helpful. I see Dubai is considered to be the second safest on the list, but countless Brits have got into serious trouble there so I wonder whether giving it a rating of two could lead to complacency?
- I agree the presentation of our travel advice could always be improved. Improvements are being made, but the pace of progress is a resource issue. The whole product is likely to shift to the new Government Digital Service over the next year or two and radical changes may take place at this time. I’ll make sure our key stakeholders (i.e. you) have a chance to feed in to this process.
- the British Behaviour Abroad report does already contain quite a lot of information about the number and type of consular assistance cases in different countries. The report is supposed to help publicise the main difficulties that people face and focus on the places Brits go to most. We do have more detailed management information and if there are particular countries or issues you’re interested in then please do ask us for more detail. If we have it, and releasing it doesn’t breach anyone’s confidentiality, we’ll send it to you.
Thanks for this detailed feedback, Richard. It’s very welcome to have the FCO responding directly like this in a public forum.
I think consistency is the key request – at least from me. Even in the maps you’ve published so far, there are some style variations in how levels of risk are coloured from one country to another. Compare Ethiopia http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/ethiopia with Kenya http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/kenya1. Or compare Senegal http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/senegal (green light, but parts advised against in text) with Mauritania http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/middle-east-north-africa/mauritania with which it shares a border.