With the pandemic changing the shape of travel and tourism, the subject of How Travel Risk is Changing in the COVID-19 era was discussed.

Specialists in risk and security joined moderator Alessandra Alonso, Founder and MD of Women in Travel CIC, to consider what needs to be taken into account when rebuilding tourism and who we need to listen to, such as women, the Black Lives Matter movement, communities whose lives have been affected by tourism and staff.

Speaker Lloyd Figgins, Chairman of Travel Risk & Incident Prevention (TRIP) Group, pointed out that the NGO sector hasn’t stopped travelling throughout the pandemic, yet fewer than 5% of clients that work in this area had thought about putting a pandemic plan in place.

Moving on to the subject of messaging, he added travel companies needed to communicate better with their customers, saying outbound operators had an opportunity to learn from domestic operators, such as holiday parks, which “really accentuate the positives and what they had done to keep visitors safe”.