How to read a U.S. State Department travel advisory

Every alert on The Sage Life Style that carries the words "U.S. Department of State" is the Department's own text, fetched from its published feed, attributed, and never rewritten. That policy is easy to state and easy to check. What is harder is knowing what to do with an advisory once you have read it — because the number at the top is the least informative part.

The four levels

The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs issues a travel advisory for every country in the world and assigns one of four levels:

1. Level 1: Exercise normal precautions
2. Level 2: Exercise increased caution
3. Level 3: Reconsider travel
4. Level 4: Do not travel

The Department describes these as advice, not prohibitions: a Level 4 advisory does not forbid a U.S. citizen from travelling, and a Level 1 advisory is not a guarantee. On the Sage alerts feed, the four levels map to our four severities — Information, Advisory, Important and Critical — so that a Level 4 country sits at the top of the list and a Level 1 country sits quietly at the bottom.

The letters that explain the number

Next to the level, most advisories carry one or more risk indicators. The Department's advisory index lists them:

• C — Crime
• T — Terrorism
• U — Civil unrest
• H — Health
• N — Natural disaster
• K — Kidnapping or hostage taking
• D — Wrongful detention
• O — Other

Two Level 2 countries can therefore mean very different things. One may carry a "C" for street crime that sensible precautions manage; another may carry "D" for wrongful detention, which no precaution manages at all. Read the letters before you read the level.

The date

Each advisory shows a "Date Issued." Treat that date as part of the advisory. An advisory issued many months ago may still be accurate, but the absence of a recent update is information in itself, and a freshly re-issued advisory is worth reading line by line for what changed. Sage records the Department's publication date on every alert and marks a re-issued advisory as "Updated" rather than replacing it silently.

Read past the summary

A country-level number is a baseline. The Mexico advisory is the clearest example: it opens with a country-wide warning about violent crime and then divides the country state by state under separate headings — "Do Not Travel To," "Reconsider Travel To," "Exercise Increased Caution When Traveling To," and "Exercise Normal Precautions When Traveling To." Yucatán, the state that holds Mérida, sits at "Exercise normal precautions"; Colima carries "Do not travel due to crime and kidnapping." The same document, four different answers. The advisory also directs readers to the separate country information page, which holds the practical detail on entry requirements, local laws and health.