Duty of care: the importance of traveler security

The new era of corporate travel

Since the beginning of the pandemic in early March 2020 by COVID-19, the corporate environment has changed in many ways. In particular, if we look at private and corporate travel, it has been affected in every way and, with the implementation of new security measures against the spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus that have been incorporated within each country across the globe, all land, air and sea travel has been reduced, thus affecting all travel. Moreover, the transportation industry estimates that, on a global scale, business travel-related losses will exceed $800 billion.

With the passage of months and the settling of the measures put forward by everyone, as well as the help of artificial intelligence, activity at airports, roads and ports has been resuming, and now, the traveler safety within corporate and private travel is one of the most important aspects to take into account when booking these "getaways". This concept is called deber de cuidado.

Before a more irreversible situation occurs, companies must foresee and organize the risks that employees may face during the trip, and have a mechanism with which they can act quickly and in a coordinated manner in the event of any event such as check-in, transportation within the trip such as cab, bus, trains, hotel, etcetera.

Duty of care, important in the travel program

The idea of deber de cuidado or literally translated as duty of care is used both on an interim basis and for business travel and subsequent periods, where it also includes the company's moral and legal obligations to take all necessary measures to ensure that employees travel safely.

Companies are forced to put in place a risk management strategy and it is therefore advisable to take into account three significant sections:

• Preventive measures should be adapted to the nature of the risks encountered.
• The employees of each company must be aware of the true importance of the risks posed by their work and, in this case, they must also be aware of the risks associated with corporate travel.
• A fundamental assessment of the essential risks of corporate travel and its constant readjustments.

In this way we can see how since the spread of the virus, in which the entire world population has been influenced, it has set off alarm bells and forced corporate travel companies to adapt to all the changes. This evolution is still very noticeable and we see it especially in the effort and emphasis that companies put when it comes to quality management to ensure the safety of all their employees.

Corporate travel has always been a fundamental pillar within companies, so much so that, people residing in Spain made 16,126,815 trips for business purposes in 2019, a 3.8% less than the previous year, generating more than 57 million overnight stays (-2.9%) and an expenditure of 6,697 million euros (-2.9%), according to the Resident Tourism Survey (ETR/Familitur) of the National Statistics Institute (INE). In contrast, a total of 6,590,347 corporate trips were made in 2020, representing 60% less than in the previous year.

From now on and on, in one way or another, thanks to the pandemic, companies have become much better at ensuring the safety of their travelers on the roads. corporate travel.