Keeping Your Travelers Safe During Corporate Travel
Mitigating travel risk is a significant responsibility for today’s travel manager, especially for female travelers. A recent GBTA and WWStay polled travel managers and buyers and found that women make up nearly 40% of business travelers today. It also determined that 69% of those surveyed agreed that women face more risk than traveling men.
Companies who provide corporate travel services should prioritize the safety of all their travelers, but this poll specifically brings to light the relevance of female traveler safety. Here’s what the poll concluded and steps you can take to improve safety.
Adjusting a Corporate Travel Policy for Women
The survey found that female safety awareness is at an all-time high, but only 18% of policies speak to women’s safety while abroad. In fact, only 44% of those polled have solidified female-friendly lodging options.
These travel managers claim that their focus for women’s safety has been more on the workplace since physical and/or sexual abuse has been a recent hot topic. Too often, a travel policy provides generic risk-related language and services without specificity for women. By reworking policy, female travelers can feel safer on their trips.
Safety Concerns for All Employees During a Trip
The poll found that two of the most frequent concerns of a female traveler are the location and type of hotel. However, men and women alike feel less safe in rooms on the first floor of motels and hotels as they pose more of a threat than those on higher floors. The more restricted access from the outside, the better. Your travelers will feel safer in hotels with 24/7 security and rooms with double locks.
Once at their destination, travelers should be offered approved, chauffeured transportation to get them safely to their hotel. However, the poll found that only 39% of companies actually provide safe, registered transportation.
Most hotels require that the front desk clerk never says a guest’s room number or name aloud, but it can happen. If it does, guests should be encouraged to request a new room, particularly if another guest is within earshot of the exchange. Room number is a matter of personal security.
How Travel Safety Impacts Vendor Relationships
Travel managers face a unique challenge in balancing vendor relations, affordable accommodations, and safety. When choosing a hotel vendor, 61% of travel managers agree that female safety is a priority, but they advise all of their travelers to avoid particular hotels due to a lack of confidence in their security.
Because managers are prioritizing safety, they’re being stricter about vendor agreements. During the RFP process, 44% of managers say they will turn down bids strictly due to their security concerns, with 28% terminating an agreement based on this factor. As a travel manager, being overly particular about your preferred vendors can pay off to make your employees feel as safe as possible.
If you need help rewriting your travel policy, Adelman client success managers have extensive experience in helping their clients do just that. From language editing to redesigning the look and feel, we can help you make your policy more inclusive. Contact us to learn more.