Corporate Travel Safety Checklist for Large Enterprises

Large enterprises face corporate travel safety challenges that multiply with scale: Thousands of employees traveling across dozens of countries and compliance obligations under ISO 31030 and local duty of care laws that demand knowing where employees are at any given moment. It’s even more challenging when booking data is fragmented across legacy systems and regional platforms.

Managing traveler safety at this scale requires systems, processes, and visibility that most organizations have not perfected.

It can make for anxious road warriors. According to Skift and Navan’s 2026 State of Corporate Travel and Expense report, 49% of business travelers cite disruptions like canceled flights and weather events as their top concern. But traveler safety can also be impacted by security incidents, health emergencies, natural disasters, political instability, and the everyday risks of navigating unfamiliar destinations.

This article provides a complete corporate travel safety checklist for large enterprises, covering​​ what travel managers should do before, during, and after employee trips to help protect their people and fulfill their duty of care obligations.

Your Corporate Travel Safety Checklist

Use this checklist to build, evaluate, and strengthen your corporate travel safety program. Each section covers what you should do before, during, and after employee trips to fulfill duty of care obligations.

1. Before Trips: Building the Foundation

A safe travel program starts long before employees board a plane. Set up these systems and processes:

Maximize booking visibility

• Choose a travel platform with competitive inventory (GDS, NDC, OTA sources) so employees don’t book on consumer sites where you can’t track them.
• Consolidate all travel types (business, guest, candidate, personal) into a single system to eliminate visibility gaps.

Build complete traveler profiles

• Require emergency contact information before employees can complete their first booking.
• Capture passport expiration dates and set automated alerts 6+ months before they expire.
• Store visa status, vaccination records, and work authorization for international travelers.
• Add loyalty program numbers to reduce friction and keep travelers on the platform.
• Integrate your HRIS so profiles update automatically when employees change roles, departments, or locations.

Create pre-trip approval workflows

• Configure destination risk ratings (State Department advisories, security intelligence) to display during booking.
• Set high-risk destinations (Level 3 and 4 advisories) to automatically trigger elevated approval.
• Limit the number of executives allowed on a single flight per your company policy. Prepare destination briefing resources
• Automatically attach destination-specific briefings (local laws, cultural considerations, emergency contacts) to itineraries.
• Include embassy and consulate contact information in trip documentation.
• Prompt international travelers to register with the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP).
• Provide ground transportation guidance (approved taxi services, areas to avoid) for high-risk locations.

2. During Booking: Embedding Safety in the Process

Safety checks should happen as employees book, not as separate paperwork they skip.

Verify documentation at the point of booking

• Configure passport validity checks against the six-month rule for international destinations.
• Flag any visa and electronic travel authorization requirements before booking confirmation.
• Surface vaccination requirements (yellow fever certificates, routine immunizations) during booking.
• Verify travel insurance coverage meets destination requirements.
• Capture business justification as part of the booking flow for audit trails.

Enable informed decision-making

• Display destination health and safety alerts prominently during search.
• Show hotel safety ratings and location context (neighborhood, proximity to meetings).
• Present flight options with connection risk considerations (tight layovers, high-cancellation routes).

Communicate before departure

• Send automated pre-trip emails with destination-specific safety information.
• Include local emergency numbers, nearby medical facilities, and company emergency contacts.
• Remind travelers of check-in protocols for high-risk destinations.

3. During Trips: Monitoring and Response

Once travelers depart, your job shifts to monitoring and rapid response.

Maintain real-time visibility

• Monitor a live dashboard showing all traveling employees with their current location and flight status.
• Track hotel check-in status to confirm travelers arrived safely.
• Capture off-platform bookings manually when they occur to close visibility gaps.
• Review traveler locations daily during periods of elevated global risk.
• Keep historical trip data accessible for incident investigation.

Proactively monitor disruptions

• Set up alerts that cross-reference weather events, strikes, and security incidents against active itineraries.
• Calculate affected traveler counts automatically when disruptions occur.
• Identify cascading impacts (connecting flights, ground transportation, hotel check-ins).
• Initiate rebooking for affected travelers proactively rather than waiting for inbound calls.

Establish communication protocols

• Confirm push notifications, SMS, and email channels all work simultaneously.
• Create a two-way messaging capability so travelers can confirm their safety status.
• Build communication templates for common scenarios (weather delays, security events, health emergencies).
• Practice mass notification for crisis events so you can reach hundreds of travelers within minutes.

Define escalation procedures

• Document clear escalation paths, from travel support to the security team to executive leadership.
• Ensure support agents can access emergency contacts for each traveler.
• Compile local emergency services numbers and procedures by destination.
• Define evacuation procedures for high-risk locations and establish coordination protocols with external security providers if you use them.

4. When Things Go Wrong: Support That Actually Helps

Travel disruptions don’t follow business hours. Make sure your support infrastructure can handle late-night and early-morning emergencies.

Ensure 24/7 coverage with context

• Test after-hours support quality to be sure it matches daytime standards and confirm support is available around the clock.
• Verify that agents can see the full traveler context (itinerary, preferences, policies, booking history) without asking travelers to repeat information.
• Test that support can view and modify bookings directly without transferring travelers.
• Confirm company policy rules are accessible to agents for compliant rebooking decisions. Build resolution capabilities
• Confirm that complex, multi-leg itineraries can be handled without multiple transfers.
• Ensure hotel and ground transportation can be arranged as part of the disruption response.
• Set up unused ticket credit tracking so credits apply automatically to future bookings. Balance AI and human support
• Deploy AI assistance for routine requests (flight status, seat selection, itinerary questions).
• Configure smooth escalation to human agents when situations require judgment.
• Ensure travelers can reach a human quickly during urgent situations (no chatbot loops). Provide VIP and executive service
• Offer white-glove service for executives and complex international itineraries.
• Create dedicated support lines or priority queues for VIP travelers.
• Document personal preferences and past issues for service continuity.

5. After Trips: Measuring What Matters

Measure the following metrics to keep improving traveler safety at your organization:

Track adoption and visibility metrics

• Monitor monthly adoption rates by department, region, and traveler type.
• Track off-platform booking rate as a leading indicator of visibility gaps.
• Measure traveler profile completeness (contact info, documents, emergency contacts).
• Include guest and candidate travel capture rate in your visibility metrics.

Measure response and resolution performance

• Track response time from disruption occurrence to traveler communication.
• Measure how quickly you identify affected travelers during crisis events.
• Track first-contact resolution rate for support interactions.
• Collect traveler satisfaction scores after incidents.

Review policy and compliance

• Monitor pre-trip approval completion rate for high-risk destinations.
• Track policy compliance during booking as a program health indicator.
• Analyze exception request patterns to identify unnecessary policy friction.
• Verify audit trail completeness for compliance reporting.
• Identify patterns that suggest policy updates are needed.

Conduct regular program reviews

• Review incident data quarterly to identify patterns and improvement opportunities.
• Update destination risk assessments as global conditions change.
• Collect traveler feedback through post-trip surveys.
• Benchmark your program against ISO 31030 standards and industry best practices.

Corporate travel safety is about building a program employees actually use, visibility that covers your entire traveling workforce, and support infrastructure that responds when situations develop. Policies and protocols matter. But they only work when built on the foundation of knowing where your people are.

How Large Enterprises Can Improve Travel Safety

Your organization can improve the safety of business travelers by paying attention to the following:

1. Close Visibility Gaps Before They Become Crises

ISO 31030:2021 outlines comprehensive requirements for travel risk management, including pre-trip assessments, traveler briefings, emergency protocols, and real-time tracking. All of it assumes you know who’s traveling and where they’re going.

But that assumption breaks down when employees book outside your platform. You lose visibility when employees book on consumer sites (which often happens when a platform lacks competitive inventory.

Travel and expense platforms like Navan that aggregate inventory from GDS systems, NDC connections, and OTA partnerships (like Hotels.com, Priceline, and Booking.com) solve this at the source. When employees find what they want at competitive prices, they stay on the platform.

2. Build Safety Checks from Your Travel Policy Into the Booking Flow

To make it easy for employees to follow your travel policy, safety protocols should be embedded in the booking experience. Pre-trip approvals, documentation checks, and destination briefings should happen as employees book, not as separate forms they skip.

Destination-specific safety information, embassy contacts, and emergency protocols should be attached to trip records. International travel often requires medical insurance, so vaccination documentation and emergency contact updates should be stored in traveler profiles to eliminate repetitive data entry.

3. Track Travelers and Respond in Real Time

Tracking travelers during trips requires two capabilities: knowing where people are and reaching them when situations develop. Two-way messaging through push notifications, SMS, and email lets you reach affected travelers instantly and confirm their safety status.

Platforms like Navan use GPS-enabled tracking in its mobile app (iPhone and Android) to show traveler locations, provided they booked through the platform. Navan’s Travel Impact Dashboard monitors strikes, weather events, and security incidents against active itineraries, showing affected traveler counts so teams can communicate proactively and initiate rebooking before anyone gets stranded.

4. Provide Support That Resolves Issues Fast

When a flight cancels at 11 p.m., travelers need immediate help from agents who already know their itinerary, preferences, and company policies. In-house teams working from integrated platforms resolve issues faster than outsourced call centers with limited system access.

The best support models combine AI efficiency with human judgment. AI handles routine requests like flight status checks and seat changes, freeing human agents to focus on complex rebookings and travelers in distress. Navan’s Ava is an AI agent that handles thousands of daily interactions with 78% satisfaction and seamlessly escalates to human agents when situations require. For executives and complex international itineraries, white-glove service provides dedicated attention and proactive trip monitoring.

5. Measure What Matters for Duty of Care

Tracking the right metrics helps determine whether your travel safety program works in practice and where there are opportunities to improve. Focus on travel platform adoption rate (the foundation of visibility), response time to incidents, policy compliance during booking, and support resolution metrics.

The following metrics connect directly to business outcomes: reduced liability exposure, lower insurance costs, faster incident response, and employee confidence that the company will support them when things go wrong.