Duty of care: the importance of traveler safety

The New Era of Corporate Travel

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early March 2020, the corporate environment has changed in many ways. Specifically, if we look at private and business trips, these have been affected in every way and, with the implementation of new security measures against the spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus that have been incorporated into each area in each country throughout the world, all land, air and sea transport has been reduced, thus affecting all travel. What's more, the transportation sector estimates that, on a global scale, losses related to business travel will exceed 800 billion dollars.

With the passing of the months and the establishment of the measures proposed around the world, as well as the help of artificial intelligence, activity has resumed at airports, roads and ports, and now, the traveler safety when it comes to corporate and private travel, it is one of the most important aspects to consider when booking these “getaways”. This concept is called Duty of Care.

Before a more irreversible situation occurs, companies must anticipate and organize the risks that employees may face during the trip, and have a mechanism with which they can act quickly and in a coordinated manner in the face of any event such as check-in, transportation within the trip such as taxis, buses, trains, hotels, etc.

Duty of care, important in the travel program

The idea of Duty of Care or literally translated as duty of care, is used both provisionally and in professional trips and subsequent periods, where the company's moral and legal obligations to take all necessary measures to ensure that employees travel safely are also included.

Companies are forced to establish a risk management strategy and therefore, it would be advisable to consider three significant sections:

• Preventive measures should be adapted to the nature of the risks encountered.
• The workers of each company must be aware of the true importance of the risks posed by their work and, in this case, they must also be aware of the risks associated with corporate travel.
• A fundamental assessment of the essential risks of corporate travel and their constant readjustments.

In this way, we can see how since the spread of the virus, in which the entire world population has been influenced, it has set off alarm bells and forced corporate travel companies to adapt to all changes. This evolution is still very noticeable and we see it above all in the effort and emphasis that companies place when it comes to managing quality to ensure the safety of all their employees.

Corporate travel has always been a fundamental pillar within companies, so much so that people resident in Spain made 16,126,815 trips for business reasons in 2019, 3.8% less than the previous year, generating more than 57 million overnight stays (-2.9%) and an expenditure of 6,697 million euros (-2.9%), according to the Resident Tourism Survey (ETR/Familitur) of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). On the other hand, a total of 6,590,347 corporate trips were made in 2020, which represents 60% less than in the previous year.

From now on, in one way or another, thanks to the pandemic, companies have improved a lot when it comes to ensuring the safety of their travelers in corporate travel.

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