Duty of care is more than insurance. Here is a practical framework for keeping business travellers safe, informed and supported — before, during and after every trip.
When employees travel for work, their employer takes on a responsibility to look after their wellbeing. This "duty of care" is partly a legal and ethical obligation and partly simple good management: travellers who feel supported are more productive and more likely to stay. Yet in many organisations, duty of care is limited to buying insurance and hoping nothing goes wrong.
A practical framework has four parts: prepare, know, respond and learn.
1. Prepare
Preparation starts with the travel policy and the booking process.
- Pre-trip information: share destination briefings covering local laws, health advice, safe transport and cultural norms, especially for first-time visitors.
- Risk assessment: identify higher-risk destinations or activities and require additional approval or precautions for them.
- Safe defaults: pre-booked airport transfers for late arrivals, well-located hotels with good security, and avoiding very tight connections.
- Insurance and health: ensure every traveller has appropriate travel and medical cover and knows how to use it.
- Traveller profiles: keep emergency contacts, medical notes the traveller chooses to share, and passport details up to date.
2. Know where people are
You cannot help a traveller you cannot locate. This is the single biggest reason to book through a travel management company or approved channel: every flight and hotel is captured, so you can answer the question "who do we have in this city right now?" within minutes.
Bookings made outside the system — directly with airlines, through personal apps or by colleagues on someone's behalf — create blind spots. A good policy explains this clearly, so travellers understand that booking through approved channels is for their benefit.
3. Respond
When something happens — a natural event, a flight cancellation, a medical issue, civil unrest — speed and clarity matter.
- Proactive alerts: notify travellers in affected areas and ask them to confirm they are safe.
- 24/7 assistance: a single number to call, answered by someone who can act — rebooking flights, extending hotel stays or arranging medical support.
- Escalation matrix: clear roles for HR, security, the travel team and leadership, so decisions are made quickly.
- Communication templates: pre-written messages for common scenarios save time when it counts.
4. Learn
After any incident, review what happened. Was the traveller easy to reach? Did they know whom to call? Did the insurance work as expected? Feed those lessons back into the policy and pre-trip guidance.
Wellbeing, not just safety
Duty of care also covers the everyday strain of frequent travel: red-eye flights followed by full-day meetings, back-to-back trips without recovery time, and long periods away from family. Simple measures help — allowing a rest period after overnight flights, choosing hotels close to meeting venues, and monitoring travel frequency for your most-travelled employees.
Specific traveller needs
Different travellers face different risks. Women travelling alone, LGBTQ+ employees visiting countries with restrictive laws, travellers with disabilities and those with medical conditions may need additional guidance or adjustments. These conversations should be handled sensitively and confidentially, with the traveller in control of what they share.
Where to start
If you are building a duty-of-care programme from scratch, start with three steps: route all bookings through one channel, give every traveller a 24/7 contact number, and agree an escalation matrix with HR and leadership. Everything else can be layered on over time.
Our corporate travel team can help you design a duty-of-care process that fits your organisation and is supported by our round-the-clock travel desk.
