Corporate travel glossary
Duty of care (business travel)
Also called: traveller duty of care · traveller safety obligation
Duty of care in business travel is an employer’s obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees travelling for work. In practice it means knowing where travellers are, being able to reach them, warning them of risks before departure, and having a tested way to assist or move them when something goes wrong.
In practice
- Traveller location is derived from bookings, which only works if bookings go through a known channel
- Trips booked outside the tool are invisible — the reason leakage matters beyond price
- Risk briefings are tied to the destination and issued before departure, not on arrival
- One escalation route for an incident, tested, and reachable outside office hours
- Covers ground movement too: the airport transfer and the night-shift commute are work travel
Why it matters
Duty of care is asked about after an incident, and the answer is whatever was already in place. A traveller the company cannot locate because they booked direct is the hardest version of that question to answer.