Travel insurance and assistance services are quickly gaining favor among travel professionals who work for companies that provide them. A new study, “Assessing the Prevalence and Value of Travel Insurance and Assistance Services”, published in September 2016 by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and AIG Travel, reveals that 95 percent of travel professionals feel that providing insurance or assistance services to employees is a valuable benefit for those who employees who travel both internationally and domestically. The study was carried out by an online survey of North American travel managers from March 22 to April 1, 2016.

Ensuring the safety and security of business travelers is an important component of duty-of-care obligations and travel insurance and assistance services can help protect both employees and the company, in addition to providing the traveler some peace of mind.

The study revealed that four out of five travel professionals say that companies offer travel advisories (85%), and travel health advisories (82%) while only 41% offer risk management training and only 26% provide GPS tracking of the traveling employees. 90% of the responders also weighed in on emergency evacuations, indicating that benefits like emergency evacuations due to medical emergencies were “very important,” while 88% felt that evacuations due to security emergencies were also very important. In terms of less dire emergencies, only 2% found trip delays to be “very important,” while 4% felt that missed connections were “very important” and 35% considered them “somewhat important.”

Services such as logistical aid such as referrals to local hospitals (75%) were “very important,” with help replacing a missing passport coming in at 66% in the “very important” category. Only 38% found benefits such as emergency cash transfers and identity theft assistance to be important.

Related services, such as those involving assistance with medical or security evacuations, are considered “most important” by 88% and 86% of the respondents respectively.

The study is available free of charge to GBTA members, and for purchase for non-members by contacting Paul Yachnes at pyachnes@gbtafoundation.org .