More globe-trotting tourists are treading on shaky ground

After a series of deadly terrorist attacks, the U.S. State Department issued an advisory May 3 urging Americans to avoid crowded tourist areas in Cairo. Seven weeks later, Egypt’s tourism minister said, “I have a different attitude about the American market.”

But it’s not what you think.

“We’re upping our expectations for the U.S.,” Ahmed el Maghraby said in an interview last month. Buoyed by the enthusiastic reception of the King Tut touring exhibit here, the minister said he hoped to see 500,000 Americans a year visit Egypt by 2007, up from 170,000 last year.

Egypt, in fact, is selling briskly in the U.S., with little or no slowdown after the U.S. advisory, several tour companies said. The same is true for Kenya, under a U.S. travel warning since May 2003, and Libya, opened last year to U.S. travelers but, as of the Travel section’s deadline Tuesday, still under a warning.

“The savvy international traveler has become very inured to travel warnings,” said Anne Bellamy, president of African Travel Inc. in Glendale.

And some tour operators too.

Although he takes advisories into account, “we don’t make decisions about where we travel based on the State Department,” said Mark Frevert, executive vice president of Boston-based Grand Circle Travel, a tour company that markets to older travelers.

Frevert expects his company’s two divisions to send 15,000 tourists to Egypt in 2006, up from nearly 10,000 this year. It plans to send 2,000 tourists to Kenya and Tanzania this year, up from just 450 in 2004, and close to 3,000 next year.

Why are so many people ignoring travel advisories from the State Department? There seem to be several reasons.

Many don’t know about the alerts, which are posted on www.travel.state.gov, the website of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, or they find them confusing. Even tour operators sometimes miss or misinterpret them.

In the post-9/11 world, some experts say, Americans have become desensitized by the constant flow of warnings, attacks and color-coded security alerts here and abroad. As of Tuesday several regions and more than 40 countries were under U.S. travel advisories. There was also a long-standing worldwide caution citing “the continuing threat of terrorist actions” and reminding Americans abroad to “maintain a high level of vigilance.”

“We are getting more used to uncertainty,” said Peter Yesawich, managing partner of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a Florida-based marketing firm that cosponsors an annual survey of U.S. travelers.

Several tour operators said pent-up demand, for instance, had inspired a recent rush to East Africa despite a travel advisory for the region that, as of last week, continued to cite the “potential for terrorist actions against U.S. citizens.”

“It’s gotten to the point where you cannot find an empty bed in East Africa,” said African Travel’s Bellamy.

There is also widespread skepticism about State Department advisories. Critics say they can be overly cautious and colored by a country’s diplomatic relations with the U.S., which the State Department denies.

Among the doubters is Bruce McIndoe, chairman and chief executive of IJet Intelligent Risk Systems, an Annapolis, Md., company that assesses problems for companies doing business abroad.

“People [who] are in the industry always look at the State Department warnings with a jaded eye,” he said. “They’re issued by a political organization, and therefore they are a tool of foreign diplomacy.”

Bob Whitley, president of the New York-based U.S. Tour Operators Assn., pointed out that Spain, for instance, a staunch U.S. ally, is not under a travel warning despite train bombings that killed 191 people there in March 2004. Meanwhile, Kenya, which hasn’t had a major attack since a car bomb at a hotel in 2002 killed 15 people, remained under a warning as of Tuesday. But in an interview earlier this year, Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said advisories were “not about sending a political message.” Rather, she said, they’re motivated by facts and “an almost sacred responsibility to best inform American citizens traveling or living abroad.”

In Kenya, for example, U.S. officials have been worried about cross-border visa control in a region regarded as “a dangerous neighborhood,” she said.

After the bombings in Spain, said Angela Aggeler, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the department issued two public announcements. The second one, urging “special caution,” expired a year ago.

Aggeler said advisories come in two forms: travel warnings, which generally recommend Americans avoid a country, and public announcements, which deal with threats regarded as temporary. Kenya and Libya are under a warning; Egypt is under a public announcement due to expire Aug. 3.

In regard to Spain, Aggeler said, “Situations where the overall security stance is not believed to have changed would not warrant a travel warning.”

Contrary to common belief, the level of threat described in a public announcement may be higher than that in a warning or vice versa, she said. It’s the wording that’s critical, however arcane. Some tips from Aggeler:

An advisory that “strongly urges” against travel to a country is stronger than one that urges Americans to “consider carefully” whether to travel. “Avoid travel” is stronger than “avoid nonessential travel.”

When nonemergency employees at a diplomatic post are “ordered” rather than just “authorized” to depart, the situation is very serious -- although either wording may merit a warning.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether to go to a destination. Travel advisories urge, recommend or remind but don’t dictate.

These days, thousands of Americans are making up their own minds.

Hear more tips from Jane Engle on Travel Insider topics at latimes.com/engle. She welcomes comments but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write to Travel Insider, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.