With a new COVID-19 variant threatening to disrupt business once again, successful companies have managed to mitigate the disruption by staying one-step ahead of the curve. Examples of this include businesses that have welcomed back their teams to the office through flexible policy changes and companies that have armed their road warriors with real-time travel intelligence.

To keep your team safe in a still-evolving travel environment, your business needs a comprehensive duty of care solution in place. While your needs may vary depending on your organization's key markets and travel budget, we’ve broken down below four essential risk management tools that can help your business stay ahead of the curve as the travel landscape changes.

Trip Briefs

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 57 percent of business travelers agreed that any destination could be considered ‘high-risk’. In retrospect, that percentage now seems low when examined through the lens of the past year’s events. Today’s travelers are more aware than ever of the ways that travel can present unexpected risks and unfamiliar terrain.

Rather than let this deter your team from traveling, use this as an opportunity to educate your employees and keep them informed. At Direct Travel, our Direct Duty of Care solution provides clients with trip briefs tailored to every international destination they visit. Trip briefs offer a snapshot of the most pressing and need-to-know information for a particular destination, such as security conditions, health concerns, and entry/exit requirements.

By arming your travelers with this destination-specific information in advance, you enable them to better handle the logistics of their trip, inspiring confidence in the process.

Travel Alerts

Travel alerts are another aspect of destination intelligence that can help ensure your travelers are safe and informed. While trip briefs provide a destination overview in advance, travel alerts monitor for incidents and changes that may impact upcoming or ongoing trips as they unfold.

At Direct Travel, we provide real-time, 24/7 travel alerts to inform travelers about breaking situations or changing travel conditions around the world. This may be a natural disaster like a hurricane, or a disruption to travel, such as a rail strike or airport delays. As the events develop, alerts are automatically emailed with essential information on transportation, health, weather, security, and how to manage the situation on the ground.

To make it easier to identify risks and manage potential threats, travel alerts are classified by three levels of escalating importance: informational, warning, and critical. Your organization can also define alerts further to reflect specific triggers that may be of interest to your business.

Mobile Integration

Your organization’s risk management strategy and ability to provide employees with meaningful destination intelligence goes hand-in-hand with mobile integration. A mobile app can offer travelers an easy and consistent way to access real-time information on-the-go.

Our Direct2U mobile platform aims to do just that, equipping travelers with the tools they need for the moment they need them. With Direct2U, users can easily manage trip reservations and access flight status updates, destination guides, and cultural information. To streamline the process, the trip notifications folder stores all relevant information in one place, saving travelers the stress of juggling multiple apps or searching through their inbox.

Locate & Communicate

In an emergency, time is of the essence when attempting to secure your company’s most important asset: your people. This is why it’s concerning that nearly one-third of travel managers are unsure of how to locate their travelers during a crisis.

This was evident at the onset of the pandemic when some businesses struggled to pinpoint the locations of employees, effectively leaving travelers stranded as borders closed. To avoid this, our risk management solution provides you with a global view of all of your travelers. You can then search for individuals or groups—even drilling down to itinerary detail—directly from the travel manager portal, with the option to export to other systems if needed.

Rather than simply identifying travelers in vulnerable situations, we provide you with the option to communicate with travelers and help guide them safely through the conditions they are experiencing on the ground.

Is your business prepared to monitor potential threats and mitigate the risks facing your team? Contact us to learn more about how Direct Travel’s Duty of Care solution can alleviate stress and protect your travelers during a crisis.