Travel risk management: a complete guide for travel managers
Travel risk management (TRM) is a strategic process that can help your organisation identify, assess, and reduce business travel risks before they occur. For businesses in the UK, prioritising travel risk management doesn’t just meet duty of care compliance standards. It strengthens your business continuity, and keeps your people safe.
Business is complex. You play a critical role in more than booking flights and hotels. Geopolitics, health crises, cyber threats, and unexpected disruptions can happen without warning. Your travellers carry your brand, your reputation, and your duty of care. Keeping them safe isn't just about compliance. It's about building trust. A smart travel risk management strategy gives you the framework to plan, communicate, respond, and improve.
This guide will show you how to build an amazing TRM policy, assess potential risks, deploy tools, track metrics, and avoid the most common pitfalls.
What is travel risk management?
Travel risk management (TRM) helps you to identify, assess, and act.
Business travel threats range from immediate physical dangers, to longer-term health concerns and operational disruptions. A smartly designed TRM programme addresses it all.
TRM protects both your travellers and your business, combining policies, tools, and proactive action. It fulfills duty-of-care obligations and ensures business continuity.
4. Travel risk categories
Key business travel threat categories include:
- Health well-being
- Security & crime
- Geo-political
- Operational
- Cyber & data
The table below shows some of the most important examples, and why they matter to business travel:
Risk category | Typical threats | Why it matters to business travel |
| Health & well-being | Diseases, fatigue, mental stress | Affects traveller productivity & safety |
| Security & crime | Theft, assault, civil unrest | Impacts traveller safety & brand exposure |
| Geo-political | Political instability, terrorism | Can escalate quickly and disrupt travel |
| Operational | Flight cancellations, accommodation issues | Endangers business continuity |
| Cyber & data | Data breaches, insecure Wi-Fi | Legal & reputational exposure |
| Environmental & natural disasters | Earthquakes, floods, extreme weather | Can strand travellers and disrupt operations |
TRM and duty of care obligations
TRM matters. In the UK, employers have a legal and ethical responsibility to protect employee health, safety, and welfare during work-related travel. This duty of care requires proactive assessment, clear communication, incident response capabilities, and continuous review. It means travellers have immediate access to security assistance when situations escalate.
The ISO 31030 standard provides a framework that helps organisations structure their approach. It champions senior leadership support, defined roles, threat protocols, and integration with company policies.
Why is travel risk management important for travel managers?
TRM helps you anticipate, rather than react, to travel risk.
It protects your travellers, upholds legal and ethical responsibilities, maintains business continuity, and safeguards your reputation. Effective TRM creates confidence and peace of mind.
TRM's importance is growing. Global instability, climate change, pandemics, and cyber threats have created a volatile business travel environment. Regulatory expectations have intensified. Not having a robust TRM programme opens you to operational challenges, with legal and financial exposure. Experienced travel risk management services can help you bridge gaps in expertise and technology.
It's not all about challenges though. Here are some important benefits:
- Traveller safety: reduces the likelihood and severity of incidents through prevention and rapid response.
- Compliance: shows stakeholders, clients, and regulators that you take responsibility seriously.
- Business resilience: minimises disruption and maintains operational continuity.
- Cost control: ensures appropriate travel insurance coverage and prevents expensive medical evacuations, medical bills, and lost productivity.
- Employee experience: builds trust and morale when travellers know they are protected.
The positive business impact of effective TRM
Here’s a closer look at the impact TRM can have on strengthening your business, based on statistics found in FCM’s guide to Understanding Travel Risk Management.
Category | Positive impact | What does this mean for travel programmes? |
| Productivity | Travel policies addressing safety needs can improve productivity by up to 32%. | A better traveller experience means better business output |
| Preparedness | Many organisations lack adequate travel threat assessments. | This preparedness gap indicates an opportunity for leadership. |
| Reputation & continuity | Travel disruptions affect brand and operations. | TRM enables resilience. |
Many companies struggle with common challenges:
- Lack of real-time visibility makes it difficult to respond promptly during a crisis.
- Fragmented data across booking tools, reporting and expense systems, and communication channels prevents adequate assessment.
- Unclear policies can lead to inconsistent decision-making and compliance gaps.
A structured travel risk management programme solves these challenges by creating centralised systems, defined processes and clear accountability. It changes managed travel from reactive and administrative into a strategic capability that protects people and helps business grow.
How can companies achieve travel risk management?
TRM is achieved through structured coordination, combining your internal guidance with support and expertise from your travel management company (TMC) and travel risk management specialists.
An effective TRM programme:
- Defines scope and policy
- Performs risk assessments
- Implements prevention and preparation measures
- Deploys monitoring and response mechanisms
- Trains travellers and continuously reviews performance.
When these partners work together through integrated platforms, magic happens. Your TMC delivers booking data, traveller tracking, and policy enforcement, while risk specialists deliver threat intelligence, crisis response, and expert consultation.
The journey to effective TRM
TRM does not happen overnight. It requires planning, engagement, and refinement. Here’s how we recommend you build a sustainable TRM programme:
Define policy and ownership
Establish a clear scope for your TRM programme. Determine categories of travel and assign responsibility for each role.
Assess travel portfolio and destinations
Analyse your organisation's travel patterns, identify high risk destinations, and assign them risk profiles. Use this data to prioritise where you focus assessment and preparation efforts.
Build a risk mitigation and traveller support plan
Develop protocols for each potential risk category. How will you prevent incidents? What support will you provide when things go wrong?
Deploy technology tools and communication workflows
Implement travel risk management solutions that give you visibility and enable rapid response. This typically includes tracking, automated alerts, incident management platforms and secure communications channels.
Train travellers and stakeholders
Ensure everyone across your global workforce understands their role in duty of care and risk management. Travellers need to know how to access support and follow protocols. Managers need to approve trips appropriately. Leadership needs to understand their duty-of-care obligations.
Conduct risk monitoring of itineraries and incidents
Continuously track where your travellers are and what is happening in those locations through ongoing risk monitoring. Track incidents to identify patterns that inform future planning.
Review and refine based on metrics
Regularly assess programme performance using defined KPIs. Conduct post-incident reviews. Update policies and procedures based on changing risk environments.
This structured approach embeds travel risk management into your organisation's culture. Each phase builds on the previous, creating a sustainable framework that evolves with your business.
What are the key components of a travel risk management policy?
Seven core components form an effective TRM policy framework, as you can see in the table below.
A comprehensive policy typically includes scope and objectives, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, travel planning and approval processes, risk analysis protocols, incident reporting and support mechanisms, insurance coverage specifications, and training/awareness programmes. These components give you the structure needed to make TRM a consistent part of your operation.
Your TRM policy serves as the foundation for all programme activities. It documents your approach and provides clear guidance for decision-making. Every policy should be tailored to your business, but these core components, as outlined in FCM’s travel risk assessment checklist, are essential:
Core TRM policy components
Component | Purpose | Key questions for travel programmes |
| Scope & objectives | Define coverage and goals | What travel types, destinations, traveller profiles fall under duty of care? |
| Roles & responsibilities | Clarify accountability | Who approves travel? Who monitors incidents? |
| Travel planning & approval | Ensure oversight and decision logic | How are high-risk trips flagged? |
| Risk assessment | Identify specific risks pre-trip | What threats exist for this destination? |
| Incident reporting & support | Define response protocols for medical emergencies and incidents | How do travellers access immediate assistance? What's the escalation path? |
| Insurance & coverage | Clarify what is insured and how it works | Does travel insurance cover health, devices, repatriation? |
| Training & awareness | Raise traveller and stakeholder readiness | When and how is training provided? |
Note: Tailor each policy component to organisation size, risk appetite, and traveller profile.
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