Travel Risk Management Implementation- A Proactive Approach

What this session covered

This session, described as the institute's first interactive meeting of its kind, examined the implementation of travel risk management as a proactive discipline. It took the form of a single invited speaker delivering a short introductory presentation, followed by an extended question-and-answer exchange with a moderator and registered participants joining from a number of countries. Opening remarks and parts of the presentation were interrupted by connection difficulties affecting both the speaker and others on the call.

The speaker set out working definitions of the key terms in the session title, describing travel, for these purposes, as any trip undertaken on behalf of an organisation for any length of time, and risk as any security, safety or health threat to the person travelling, with examples ranging from petty and organised crime, kidnapping and terrorism through to cybercrime and state action. The central line of argument was that responsibility for travel risk rests with senior management and should be discharged through planning made in advance of any trip, rather than improvised trip by trip. The speaker described a forthcoming international standard intended to give organisations practical guidance on the health, safety and security of people travelling for work, noting that it had been under development for some years, ran to some sixty pages with annexes, and, while not itself law, could be treated as an international benchmark of best practice in jurisdictions that recognise ISO standards where no specific national law exists.

The question period covered which functions within an organisation should own travel risk management, with the speaker maintaining that top management must be involved from the outset and that training should extend to managers and not only to travellers. Further exchanges addressed protecting travellers and company information against cybercrime, the treatment of pandemics within a standard designed to remain in force for several years, the position of accompanying dependants, responding to risks arising once a journey is under way, meet-and-greet arrangements, the selection and location of hotels, police conduct and corruption at some destinations, currency-declaration difficulties, the handling of bribery, crisis-management arrangements, and the effect of a traveller's own profile and conduct on the level of risk they face. The moderator and several participants contributed anecdotes drawn from their own travel experience.

Key points raised

• The session framed travel risk as a management responsibility to be addressed through advance planning rather than reactive response.
• The speaker offered specific working definitions of "travel", "risk", "management", "implementation" and "proactive" as used in this field.
• A forthcoming international standard giving organisations guidance on travellers' health, safety and security was described as filling a gap where countries have no specific law on the matter.
• The speaker argued that top management must be engaged from the outset and that training should reach managers, not travellers alone.
• Practical Q&A topics included device security against cybercrime, hotel selection and location, emergent mid-journey risks, crisis-management teams, and how a traveller's profile affects risk.
• Pandemics were said to be treated only in general terms in the standard, with a separate supplement being prepared to deal with COVID-19 specifically.