Excerpt from BTN
Having obliterated the travel world for nearly two years, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022 will no longer be the primary risk to business travellers, nor the principal duty of care concern for travel managers.
While it’s impossible to predict precisely what will happen next year, our worldwide network of risk intelligence specialists analyse information from trusted sources and use their deep understanding of repeated patterns of human behaviour to interpret this and suggest what may happen. And in 2022 we expect Covid-19 to be among a raft of risk and duty of care concerns as business travellers get back on the road again.
Safety, security and sustainability will be the prime considerations in 2022. Covid-19 is sure to be in the top five travel risks again, but the impact of climate change in its broadest sense is likely to have the greatest influence.
Firstly, what travel managers are requesting from their suppliers has changed; they want detailed sustainability information as they must consider their company’s carbon footprint. This is closely aligned with the rise of purposeful travel – thinking about the ROI of travel before booking, travelling directly by the most eco-friendly mode of transport possible, and taking into consideration any negative impact on communities along the way.
Equally of concern is how climate change is affecting weather patterns and the number of natural disasters we are seeing today. Storms, wildfires, extreme temperatures and monsoons continue to be more severe and to disrupt travel – so too volcanic eruptions.
One of the consequences of this extreme weather is large-scale forced migration which creates havoc on particular routes and at borders. What is happening between Belarus, Poland and Germany, and from North Africa to Italy and through Turkey are good examples.
Geopolitical changes will also add new tensions to the world order, potentially introducing new considerations for travellers and travel managers. The Biden administration’s isolationist approach has left space for other countries like China, for instance, to increase their dominance in Hong Kong, and flex their muscles in Taiwan and the South China Sea, while in Europe there is set to be a change in the power balance following Angela Merkel's leadership in Germany.
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