Are you ready to get your employees safely back to travelling?

According to a recent survey conducted by Amadeus, business travellers are really enthusiastic about resuming travel: of the 1,400 business travellers surveyed across seven countries, an overwhelming 84% majority admitted to being ready to travel for work if the correct safety measures are in place. 

To better understand what these safety measures are, that can get corporate travellers feeling confident about travelling again, Amadeus and AXA Partners recently hosted a webinar aimed at corporations. Focused on 'The new normal in business travel: Are you ready to get your employees safely back to travelling?' the webinar discussed how the current travel landscape has become increasingly complex, fast-changing, and fragmented resulting in many new pain points along the traveller's journey. Some of these include the changing jurisdictions in each country as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns, the need for health certificate verifications, and the resultant longer, inefficient processes and queues at airports. 

What should corporations focus on?

Going forward, technology is seen as key to create a new, connected, frictionless ecosystem where contactless solutions will be the norm. With the critical objective of getting the right information across at the right time, digital assistants will play an important role in travel recovery. Corporations need to make sure they have the right tools to adapt their travel policies and approval flows as the situation evolves. Employees should be provided with risk information at the time of booking and when they are on the road, with corporations communicating with them if they are at risk.

Duty of care (DOC) will assume greater significance; while previously companies just focused on security challenges, now the dominant focus will be on health and safety. This includes medical assistance such as teleconsultation in your native language 24/7, no longer a nice-to-have but a must. In fact, DOC will expand to areas never covered before such as psychological wellbeing to deal with mental trauma that employees could face if left stranded in a location they were in. With the right travel insurance in place which covers all of this, corporations can look after their employees while controlling associated costs. 

Another change is how the role of travel managers within the corporation will become increasingly critical, as they will now be responsible for more than just travel, looking into the medical, HR, and mobility needs of employees. 

Post-travel debriefs where travel managers seek to close the feedback loop with employees who have just concluded a business trip will also become necessary. This way corporations will be able to assess how their policies, processes and pool of providers are working on ground and fine-tune them if necessary. 

For a full recording of the Amadeus and AXA webinar, click here.

Content courtesy of Amadeus