It's summer. While many are taking their long awaited holiday breaks, others are still travelling on business. And, as we all know, the choice of where to travel on business has nothing to do with weather, tourist attractions and scenery and everything to do with corporate need.
There have always been business trips to parts of the world that have elicited gulps from friends whose idea of travel starts and stops with the Côte d'Azur. For example, the location of the world's energy reserves means workers in the oil, gas and marine sector have often made complex journeys to hazardous places.
More recently, the spotlight has been on aid workers who regularly make trips to parts of Africa and the Middle East that are established scenes of conflict.
But most conflict and regions reserved for "essential travel only" have been outside of Europe.
In the past year that has all changed.
The Bataclan massacre in Paris last year and the Brussels Airport attacks earlier this year demonstrated how two large European business destinations were no longer "safe". Last week's incidents in Nice and Istanbul confirm that security experts can no longer split their programmes between Europe and the rest of the world.
For travel managers this means a rethink in duty of care programmes.
Incidents can now happen virtually anywhere so rather than having complex procedures for travel to South Sudan and none for France, there is an urgent need to introduce an incident response process which is applicable everywhere, both at home and abroad. This means that all travellers need to be counselled not just on the basis of likelihood of incident but on what the communication procedure would be in the event of incident.
It needs to be clear what communication and what service the employer will provide for its travellers. For example, travellers should know whether to expect the employer to rebook the ticket or whether that it their responsibility. Should the onus be on them to notify their employer that that they are safe and well? What guidance can travellers reasonably expect to receive?
It sounds so simple. But it's not. Mobile communications are not 100% reliable. In addition a process which seems rational within meeting room doors could be completely unworkable in the field because factors such as data protection rules vary according to country of employment.
Not simple, not straightforward and not cheery thoughts. But as we read news about attacks on civilians we need to be aware that indiscriminate attacks heighten the risk for business travellers and so a plan is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have part of traveller risk policy.
And that that can be much more complex than we think.