FAQs

Travel Risk Management is a comprehensive solution to keep organisations and their travellers safe. It’s made up of medical, security and travel assistance components and the travel risk program’s objective is to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. At its core, it is the practice of actively considering threats that your staff, students, or assets could face while abroad and preparing them and your organisation to handle them. Travel Risk Management combines both proactive and reactive elements and offers specialised services beyond traditional business travel accident insurance policies (BTAs) to truly ensure your duty of care obligations are met. A comprehensive Travel Risk Management plan should leverage medical and intelligence experts, travel technology, and include pre-, during, and post-travel elements. These are the key benefits of Travel Risk Management Support.

A good Travel Risk Management company should provide both proactive and reactive services that will reduce risk to your travellers. Examples of proactive services include pre-trip risk assessment and advisories, medical and security consulting, and training. Post trip, these services could include a health assessment and/or security debrief. Examples of reactive services, or services provided during travel, include 24/7 travel, medical, and security assistance; location monitoring; travel technology; and physical security. In addition to these common services, there are many other unique services we provide. Here is a full list of our services.

At its most basic level, duty of care is the legal and ethical responsibility to ensure the welfare of others. Simply put, it’s doing the right thing. This responsibility to do the right thing can extend beyond office walls to include employees working from home or in another country (digital nomads), students or staff travelling abroad, and even contractors. In an organisation with travellers, duty of care means a demonstration of interest for your travellers’ safety by planning and taking preventive measures to mitigate risk. Legally speaking, duty of care is the organisation’s responsibility to mitigate foreseeable risk and should be included in your corporate travel management plan.

Duty of care is important because it demonstrates that an organisation cares about its people. A lot can go wrong when an employee travels for business and it’s the organisation’s duty to be prepared for whatever happens. Some common issues that business travellers encounter include misplacing a passport, becoming ill while abroad, or getting in a transportation accident. From an organisational perspective or as a travel manager, knowing you’ve met the legal and moral obligations will give you peace of mind.

While duty of care focuses on an organisation’s obligation to keep its people safe and protect their wellbeing, corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes this a step further and focuses a bit more on the larger picture of an organisation’s impact on society. In other words, CSR is an organisation’s obligation to conduct business in an ethical or philanthropic way that positively impacts the economy, society, and the environment. Duty of care and CSR are interconnected because in today’s world, an organisation needs to care for their people as well as the world we live in.

ISO 31030 is an industry first guidance with a best practice framework for Travel Risk Management. This 160-page document provides a formal approach to the development, execution, and evaluation for an organisation to review its Travel Risk Management policy. Your corporate travel management plan should carefully consider this document. To support your organisation’s adoption or benchmarking of the framework, World Travel Protection created an easy-to-use ISO 31030 Self-Audit tool.

ISO 31030 is a guidance document that provides the first global framework for Travel Risk Management. It is not certifiable; however, following the framework ensures a common practice, language and adoption thus creating a standardisation for users. World Travel Protection pioneered a self-audit tool that easily guides you through the key aspects of the framework. Many organisations also take advantage of our ISO 31030 expert consulting to ensure their policy is up to date.

Travel medical assistance is important when you’re travelling outside of the area or country where your healthcare plan exists. This type of assistance supports travellers before, during and after their trip with health and medical related needs. Some of the things your medical assistance company can help you with are locating medical providers in your language (or a translator if needed), arranging transportation, coordinating evacuations, and replacing lost or run out medication. Some common ways one could utilise this service when ill abroad is to use telehealth services or receive guidance in finding the closest local hospital with specific capabilities for your condition.

Our global team of World Travel Protection (WTP) medical consultants are all clinically practicing specialists as well, so when travellers need emergency medical support, expert help is available 24/7. Learn more here. Having a medical assistance company in place helps reduce stress for those in need, and also helps those responsible for their wellbeing ensure other potential risks are limited.

Yes! Travel Risk Management is different from health, travel, or trip cancellation insurance. Rarely do even the most comprehensive insurance plans include access to all of the following:

• Pre-travel briefings
• Security, risk and intelligence insights
• Access to travel technology that monitors for potential travel disruptors 24/7

Yet all are important to help you stay safe while abroad. Travel Risk Management and insurance work together to provide a comprehensive care package for travellers and help with cost containment should an incident occur.

Security risk assistance or management is the practice of assessing and tackling risk abroad for organisations, students, staff, and assets before, during, and after travel. It makes up one arm of Travel Risk Management. At World Travel Protection, our global security assistance services are intelligence-driven and focused on preventing threats. Through our world-class technology and intelligence tools, we empower our travellers and their risk managers to make smarter, safer choices.