Companies must be responsible for the security of their travellers, Chris Crowley, head of sales for BCD Travel in the UK, said.
He told about 100 delegates at an ACTE ITM partnership forum in London that travellers had to be warned of any risks on their trips.
"You must have someone in your organisation who takes responsibility for doing this," Mr Crowley said.
Companies had responsibility to know where their travellers might be at risk and what could happen to them.
But there were three simple principle of managing possible risks, what he called the 'three I's': inform, influence and identify.
First, travellers had to be informed and warned on any and all risks or likely flashpoints with regular updates, he said.
Secondly companies must be ready to react quickly if "hotspots" arose. "You must be ready to adapt policy and issue guidelines to your suppliers," he said.
Companies must also communicate travel policy and risk management to colleagues and send guidelines to suppliers.
Thirdly companies must have up to date data, not just from the Foreign Office but also other sources, like the company's offices around the world and have tracking tools for their travellers.
Mr Crowley said companies had to stipulate on their RFPs to suppliers their needs on security and "to test these suppliers' commitments to make sure that they actually do what they say they do.
"You must know what disaster recovery programme your suppliers have – it is not just saying that they have it, you need to see it, they must show you case studies to illustrate it.
A global travel manager told the Forum that threats to travellers were increasing.
These included terrorism, disasters caused by global warming and diseases and, because of globalisation, these risks had to be managed across the world.
"You have to minimise travel risk," he said and this included more use of video conferencing and less actual travel.
He said that his company had a global travel policy which was mandated and used a security company for assistance.
"We do not rely on a travel agent - that would be a foolish thing to do but it is a source of information for us and we have a Global Emergency Assistance Programme.
"Our focus is not on cutting the cost of a ticket but of door to door travel so employees will not have to spend so much time travelling which leads to a better quality of life and less risk," he said.
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