Corporate travel risk management: A modern guide for 2026
By Ryan Schaffer, CFO at Expensify. Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.
Managing business travel used to mean booking flights and hotels. Now, it means protecting employees from risks ranging from flight disruptions to geopolitical tensions, all while maintaining the visibility needed to respond when things go wrong.
This guide explains what travel risk management solutions look like in practice, why they matter, and how to build a program that protects your team.
Key takeaways
- Corporate travel risk management is your systematic approach to protecting employees during work trips, combining policies, procedures, and technology to ensure safety while keeping business moving forward.
- Duty of care isn't optional; it's the legal and moral foundation that requires you to protect employee health and safety during business travel, and failing to meet these obligations can expose your organization to significant liability.
- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace transportation incidents accounted for over 2,000 worker fatalities in 2023, underscoring why proactive travel risk management programs are essential for employee protection.
- A comprehensive risk assessment follows five critical steps: identifying destination-specific risks, evaluating traveler vulnerability, assessing trip logistics, determining mitigation measures, and documenting findings, each building on the last to create a complete safety picture.
- Modern travel risk management thrives on integration. Connecting booking platforms, expense management, risk intelligence, and communication tools creates the visibility and rapid response needed when incidents occur.
What is corporate travel risk management (and how duty of care fits in)
Corporate travel risk management is a systematic approach to identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks employees face when traveling for work through policies, procedures, and tools.
Duty of care is the legal foundation – the obligation to protect employee health and safety during business travel. Understanding the connection between duty of care and travel risk management is essential: while corporate travel risk management describes the operational program, duty of care describes the legal responsibility that makes the program necessary.
As Ryan Schaffer, CFO at Expensify, puts it, "Duty of care isn't just emergencies. It's knowing where your people are before, during, and after travel."
What is duty of care in business travel?
Duty of care travel obligations require employers to protect employee health, safety, and wellbeing during work-related travel. This legal and moral obligation exists in most jurisdictions and creates real liability when organizations fail to meet it.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace transportation incidents accounted for over 2,000 worker fatalities in 2023, underscoring why proactive travel risk management programs are essential for employee protection.
How duty of care shapes your risk management approach
Duty of care creates the legal foundation that drives travel risk management program requirements. Organizations that fail to meet these obligations face potential legal liability, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage, which is why having a formal travel risk management policy isn't optional or just a nice-to-have.
Why travel risk management programs matter
As travel volume increases, managing bookings, expenses, and risk becomes more complex. In 2025, global business travel spending was projected to reach around $1.57 trillion, further emphasizing why organizations need centralized travel risk and expense management.
Employee safety and wellbeing
The fundamental purpose of any travel risk management program is to protect employees from harm.
Schaffer breaks it down: "Duty of care is typically brought up in emergency situations, but generally it is about knowing where your people are at any point in time. Furthermore it means supporting them before the trip, during the trip, and ensuring they can get home safely."
Legal compliance and liability reduction
Formal programs help meet duty of care obligations, reducing exposure to lawsuits or regulatory penalties.
Operational continuity and business resilience
When you know where travelers are and can reach them quickly, business keeps moving, even during unexpected events.
Cost control and financial protection
Proactive business travel security measures prevent expensive incidents like emergency evacuations and costly trip disruptions.
Schaffer explains, "Unmanaged travel has hidden financial risk. Employees booking slightly earlier or last-minute flights can add 10% to 20% per trip, which compounds quickly at scale."
Common business travel risks to consider
Travel risk managers must address a wide range of risk categories:
Physical and health risks
This category includes illness, injury, challenges with accessing healthcare abroad, and considerations for carrying and obtaining medication. It also covers threats like terrorism, crime, civil unrest, and geopolitical tensions that can affect destination location safety and harm travelers.
Schaffer notes: "Regional incidents that can cause delays or safety risks, local strikes, or weather patterns impacting airport outages can strand employees and are avoidable if the right tools are in place. Similarly, lacking medical infrastructure or local political tensions can cause situations which could be avoided or accounted for."
Operational and disruption risks
Flight cancellations, transportation strikes, road closures, and communication network outages can strand travelers. Natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, create similar challenges.
Digital and data risks
Travelers face cybersecurity risks such as unsecured networks, device theft, and challenges protecting sensitive company data abroad.
How to conduct a risk assessment for business travel
A risk assessment for business travel follows these five steps:
1. Identify destination-specific risks
Research the political climate, health advisories, crime rates, and infrastructure of the travel destination. Use resources like government travel advisories and professional risk intelligence services from a travel risk management company to gather current information.
2. Evaluate traveler vulnerability
Consider individual factors that could affect a traveler's safety: experience level, health conditions, language skills, and personal characteristics that might increase vulnerability in specific regions.
3. Assess trip logistics and itinerary
Review transportation methods, accommodations, meeting venues, and planned activities to identify potential risk exposure points.
4. Determine mitigation measures
Based on the identified risks, determine specific actions to mitigate them. Examples include choosing hotels in safer neighborhoods, arranging for secure transportation, or adjusting itineraries to avoid high-risk areas or times.
5. Document and communicate findings
Create a formal, written assessment and share it with the traveler, their manager, and relevant stakeholders as part of the travel risk management plan.
How to build a corporate travel risk management policy
A written travel risk management policy should include the following:
Pre-trip approval and booking requirements
The travel expense policy must define when trips require formal approval, who is authorized to grant that approval, and the mandatory requirements for booking travel through approved channels. Centralized booking is key as it significantly supports traveler visibility.
"The biggest gap is visibility and compliance. The company might have a great policy on paper, but enforcement is the hardest part of managed travel. The policy might say 'book only using approved suppliers,' but in practice employees book outside systems due to old habits or a lack of awareness," Schaffer explains.
Traveler safety guidelines and protocols
Include expectations for pre-trip destination research, travel registration requirements, and clear behavioral guidelines to enhance personal security.
Emergency contact and escalation procedures
Detail who travelers must contact in various emergency scenarios and the step-by-step escalation procedures for organizational response.
Expense and reimbursement parameters
Briefly address how travel expenses are managed within the policy framework. Platforms like Expensify can be used to enforce policy compliance automatically during both the booking and expense submission processes.
Compliance and enforcement mechanisms
Explain how the organization will ensure employees follow the policy and clearly state the consequences for non-compliance.
How to implement your travel risk management program
For organizations building a program from scratch, follow these steps:
1. Assess current travel management practices
Audit existing travel-related policies, tools, and processes to identify gaps and establish a baseline.
2. Define program objectives and scope
Clearly define what the program is intended to achieve and which travelers, destinations, and trip types are covered.
3. Select technology and service providers
Evaluate and select travel risk management services and booking platforms that fit your organization's specific needs. Integrated spend management platforms are valuable as they can streamline both travel booking and expense tracking.
💡 Pro tip from Ryan Schaffer, CFO of Expensify: "Consolidate all travel + expenses first, then layer policy."
4. Train employees and travel managers
Ensure all stakeholders understand their responsibilities and know how to use the program's tools effectively.
5. Launch and communicate the program
Launch the program with a clear communication plan informing everyone about expectations, resources, and support systems.
6. Monitor performance and iterate
Establish KPIs to evaluate effectiveness and use incident feedback to continuously improve the program.
How technology supports corporate travel risk management
Technology enables effective travel risk management, but programs break down when travel data is fragmented across multiple systems.
Centralized booking creates a reliable source of truth for traveler information: who is traveling, where they're going, and when. This visibility becomes critical during disruptions.
When booking, expense, and approval data live together, organizations respond faster and reduce manual gaps in risk response. Integrating travel data with finance and HR systems connects traveler location, spend, and employee records in one view.
Platforms like Expensify support this by unifying travel booking and expense management, reducing fragmentation without requiring separate tools for every function.
Monitoring, alerts, and crisis response for business travel
"Without centralized booking, records are scattered and response fails. With one system, you can identify at-risk employees instantly and act," Schaffer explains.
Here are practical ways to monitor traveling employees:
Realtime location visibility
Leverage itinerary data from booking platforms and voluntary location sharing through mobile apps to know where employees are.
Automated check-in systems
Systems that automatically prompt travelers to confirm their safety at regular intervals or when triggered by nearby incidents.
Emergency alert and response capabilities
Monitoring systems trigger alerts when travelers may be affected by nearby incidents, enabling rapid, targeted response from the crisis management team.
Crisis response steps
Establish a crisis management team: Identify individuals responsible for managing travel emergencies and define their roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority.
Create emergency communication channels: Set up multiple, reliable channels to reach travelers and coordinate response teams, with backup options if primary channels fail.
Develop evacuation plans: Prepare procedures for removing employees from dangerous situations, with clear escalation paths and access to emergency support.
Conduct post-incident reviews: After every incident, analyze what happened and what can be improved to enhance future risk control.
Types of corporate travel risk management solutions
Most organizations use a combination of travel risk management companies and platforms based on risk profile, team size, and travel volume.
Travel risk intelligence platforms
Platforms focused on destination risk analysis, alerts, and emergency response coordination, often used by large enterprises with complex international travel needs.
Corporate travel management platforms
Platforms that combine booking, policy enforcement, and traveler visibility in a single system.
Integrated travel and expense management platforms
Some platforms unify travel booking with expense management, giving finance teams realtime visibility into both where employees are traveling and how money is being spent.
Expensify takes this integrated approach by connecting travel booking, policy enforcement, and expense tracking in one platform, reducing fragmentation without requiring separate risk or finance tools.
Building a resilient global travel program with Expensify
Effective travel risk management requires complete visibility into where employees are traveling and what they’re spending. Expensify's integrated approach connects travel booking, policy enforcement, and expense tracking in one platform.
Schaffer's advice: "Consolidate all travel bookings into one travel and expense platform. The expense piece is crucial because without it, the company is unable to detect bookings made outside the company platform, which is when bad things can happen."
Get started with Expensify by clicking on the button below to see how unified travel and expense management supports better risk visibility.
FAQs about corporate travel risk management
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The four C's of corporate travel management are cost, convenience, control, and compliance. These are the core priorities that organizations must balance when managing their business travel programs.
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The primary objective is to protect the health, safety, and security of employees while enabling productive and successful business travel. This is achieved through proactive risk identification, assessment, and mitigation.
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Costs vary widely based on organization size, travel volume, destination risk levels, and chosen service providers, ranging from basic policy implementation to comprehensive managed services.
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Yes. All organizations have duty of care obligations to protect traveling employees, though program complexity should scale appropriately to travel volume and risk exposure.
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Review policies at least annually, and update whenever there are significant changes in travel patterns, destinations, regulations, or after major incidents.
