According to an International SOS risks forecast for 2020, the top 10 health and security risks for business travel in 2020 come from geopolitical shifts, climate change, mental health issues, physical health, cybercrime, infectious disease outbreaks and bleisure travel.
Millennials and Gen Z are also entering the workplace with different preferences, expectations and attitudes to risk. High-profile duty of care legal cases, as well as under-resourced and inexperienced start-ups mean corporations may struggle to meet duty of care obligations.
Alongside these predictions from a Business Resilience Trends Watch survey that polled over 1,300 decision makers, the top reasons business travel managers expect to change itineraries in 2020: 51% believe that health and security risks increased in the past year and 47% anticipate risks will rise in the coming year.
The report also notes that emerging traveler habits, both domestically and internationally, and diversification of the workforce are creating grey zones of risk. Employers are not yet aligning travel policies with new potential risk factors, and people are choosing not to act within policy if it restricts their use of preferred modes of transport or accommodation, according to the report.
Additional findings from the report: just 11% included shared economy services in their travel policy; only 26% of organizations include considerations for female travelers in their travel policy; 31% cover cyber security; 11% include considerations for LGBTQ+ travelers; mental health issues are included in a mere 15% of travel policies; considerations for travelers with disabilities are covered by only 12%; and bleisure travel was covered in 22% of policies.
Source:TTG Asia
