Focus: Is anywhere in the world still safe?

The global village is shrinking again. We got used to thinking of the planet as one big peaceful playground, made reachable and affordable by better and cheaper transport. Now the bombs in Casablanca provide yet another reason – as if it were needed – for fearful former travellers to stay at home.

The village green is probably still a safe place for a game of cricket (as long as you keep your eyes open) but don't stray beyond the boundary or you might get blown to pieces. That's how it feels, anyway, as the number of dangerous places seems to escalate by the day.

Four years ago David and Trish Jarvis of St Albans, Hertfordshire, flew to Israel for a holiday. Their son Mark joined a volunteer team building wells in Tanzania, while their daughter Jemima was backpacking in the southern Philippines. This year every one of those countries is the subject of a warning by the Foreign Office, which says travellers should avoid them because of the high threat of terrorism. The Jarvises are going to the Cotswolds.

"There has been a lot of talk about the world turning into one big global village in recent years," says Frances Tuke of the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta). "That just won't be the case any more if this goes on."

Not that there is any such thing as a completely safe place. "Just before the war the Foreign Office put out a general global alert for terrorism and that still stands. Staying in Britain is not necessarily safe, although we do have pretty good security forces in place."

Big travel agencies can adjust relatively easily to threats, she says, by switching locations. "It is the smaller operators who specialise in particular countries that are going to be hit. We have seen that in China with Sars and we expect it will be the case with Kenya and Morocco."

Abta members have no choice but to follow government advice. "We do not have the same access to independent information, so we have to accept the warnings. The safety of the traveller is paramount."

The Foreign Office says it doesn't warn against travel to all countries in which there is a risk of terrorism. "If we were to do so it could cover a large proportion of the world, serving only to cause panic and disrupt normal life. That is precisely what terrorists are striving to achieve."

The FO advice contains a chilling list of attacks in the past 18 months that received less attention than those in Kenya and Bali. They include suicide attacks on a synagogue in Tunisia and a bus in Karachi; explosions on the Costa Blanca, the Costa del Sol and in Spanish cities; shootings in Yemen and Saudi Arabia; an attack on a nightclub in Colombia; and bombs at airports in the Philippines and Indonesia.

"These attacks show that terrorists are prepared to attack the least well-protected targets such as innocent holidaymakers," says the FO, "as long as they can be seen to hit at Western interests."

In some "dangerous" places, however, there is a threat only if you become involved in internal disputes. Lewis Doney, 23, has just returned from six months as an environmental and educational volunteer in eastern Nepal. The struggle between the government and Maoists led the Foreign Office to warn of "an increased risk of terrorism" but Mr Doney saw little trouble. "The police leave you alone because they have never heard of Westerners becoming Maoists and the Maoists do not bother you because they know it would lead to a big crackdown. So we tend to be little more than spectators."

The warnings can have dire consequences for those working in the countries concerned. Not surprisingly they protest. "The British authorities are being over-zealous," says Colin Church, head of the Kenya Wildlife Service. "I accept the country has been put on high alert but a blanket ban on flights is so damaging. Revenue to parks will be directly affected if a review of the situation is not made very soon." If game parks do not attract money from tourism the government may turn parts of them over to farming.

A decade ago American tour operators were reluctant to come to Britain because of the IRA bombing campaign. Hoteliers in the countryside protested that they were miles from any danger, but that didn't cut much ice on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile tourism in the Republic of Ireland suffered because some Brits thought they might be at risk there. Now there is a similar danger of terrorists having a far greater impact than their actions really warrant, because of fear and the lack of basic knowledge about the places we go on holiday.

Casablanca is an industrial town some way from the main Moroccan tourist centre of Marrakesh. Tourists do not seem to have been the target on Friday. "We go to Agadir in the south which is 300 miles from Casablanca," says a spokesman for Airtours. "Unless the FO changes its advice we will continue to operate."

Perhaps they are on to something: a way to beat the terrorists, if you have the nerve. The bombers depend on surprise and are reluctant to strike where security is tight – as it invariably is anywhere that has just been hit. Flights to Bali became dirt cheap after the bombing but there has been no trouble there since. The terrible truth is that a last-minute holiday in Casablanca next week will almost certainly be a bargain.