What Does Duty of Care Legally and Practically Demand?
Organizations owe travelling staff reasonable protection from foreseeable risks, and 'we booked a good hotel' does not survive scrutiny after an incident. Practical duty of care means knowing the destination's current risk picture, preparing the traveller, tracking the journey at a proportionate level and having a response that works at 3 a.m., documented, so the diligence is provable.
What Belongs in Pre-Travel Preparation?
The package for elevated-risk trips:
- Destination brief (current security, health, political and legal-risk picture, not last year's country page
- Journey design) vetted transfers, route options, arrival protocols; airports are the predictable vulnerability
- Accommodation assessment (location, access control and emergency egress, not star rating
- Communication plan) check-in cadence, codewords for duress and who answers when a check-in is missed
- Traveller briefing, behavioural basics that defeat opportunistic targeting
What Turns Plans Into Actual Response?
A named 24/7 escalation owner, local response resources arranged before departure (medical, legal, security) and rehearsed decision authority for evacuation or extraction calls. In-country partners matter most: response is local by nature. Garuda provides destination intelligence and response arrangements across India and, through partners, international locations, one desk for the whole travel-risk stack.