We Are Only Scratching the Surface of Duty of Care

Late last year, we released a study that looked into the state of duty of care within the UK, which gave us some shocking results. The most important of these was that, from the 53 per cent of travellers that had been near a major event while travelling, 41 per cent of those were not contacted by their company at all.

That’s simply not good enough; with the political and environmental climate we find ourselves in, there are an increasing number of incidents for travellers to be wary of – no longer is a bag being snatched the biggest threat a business traveller has to worry about. The policies in place need to evolve in line with the threats faced.

Despite this, the messages emanating from travel management companies and travel decision makers haven’t changed for years. In their role, they are acting as the guardians of travellers on behalf of clients, but there is still a fundamental issue that pervades almost all business travel – visibility.

In this Business Travel iQ article, I delve into this topic in detail, outlining several different problem areas and common arguments heard when discussing duty of care. These include:

• The issue of not capturing data from where people are booking
• The often-forgotten area of domestic travel
• The importance of data collection, from accommodation through to travel
• The long-term implications of a ‘cheapest is best’ travel policy
• The ‘Big Brother’ debate

There’s plenty to discuss within the topic of duty of care, but the message throughout remains the same: keep travellers healthy and safe, with visibility into their entire trip and a clear way to contact them during emergencies. It’s high time that the business travel industry took this as standard, not just an aspiration.