Once upon a time, business travel came with a certain swagger. A boarding pass, a lounge pass and perhaps a quiet sense that someone, somewhere, had everything under control.
These days? Not so much.
A new global report from Zurich suggests the corporate road warrior is feeling more rattled than reassured and increasingly unimpressed with how employers are handling it.
The insurer’s Business Travel Outlook 2026, based on feedback from 4,000 travellers across five continents, paints a clear picture: disruption isn’t the exception anymore. It’s the job description.
A hefty 80% of respondents experienced at least one road disruption in 2025. More tellingly, over half ran into something more serious, an incident or emergency, while travelling for work. That might mean delays or diversions, but it also includes the kind of headlines that now feel alarmingly routine: natural disasters, geopolitical tensions and civil unrest.
In fact, one in five travellers reported encountering those higher-risk scenarios, more than those dealing with medical incidents.
That’s quite the shift.
Confidence is slipping
Perhaps the most revealing stat in the report isn’t about logistics, it’s about mindset. Some 43% of business travellers say they now feel less safe travelling for work than they used to.
And when travellers start to feel uneasy, the employer-employee relationship starts to wobble.
Nearly three in five respondents believe their company could do more to keep them safe on the road. More bluntly, 60% said they would consider leaving their job if their safety wasn’t taken seriously.
That’s no longer a travel policy issue. That’s a talent retention issue.
Zurich’s Cara Morton, CEO Global Businesses and Operations, framed it plainly: “As business travel enters a new era of rapid change and greater complexity, the need for proactive support for business travelers has never been greater.”
In other words, duty of care is no longer a tick-box exercise.
The Gen Z reality check
If there’s a cohort keeping travel managers awake at night, it’s Gen Z.
Younger travellers are clocking up more international trips and embracing the rise of blended travel, that neat mash-up of work and leisure we’ve all lazily labelled “bleisure”. But they’re also less confident handling crises abroad.
Roughly a quarter of respondents, rising to nearly a third among Gen Z, admitted they wouldn’t know what to do in an emergency overseas.
Layer in higher anxiety around mental health and a greater tendency to misplace belongings, and it’s easy to see why risk managers are taking a keener interest in the under-30 frequent flyer.
Bleisure adds a twist
And yes, bleisure is still booming.
A sizeable 81% of respondents plan to mix business and leisure travel in 2026. It’s a trend that makes perfect sense from a traveller’s perspective, to squeeze some personal time around the edges of a work trip, and everyone wins.
Except, perhaps, the policy writers.
Because while bleisure feels modern and flexible, it blurs the lines around insurance, liability and responsibility. When a trip is half business and half beach, who owns the risk?
That question is still being quietly debated in plenty of corporate corridors.
Employers on notice
For companies sending staff across borders, the takeaway is fairly straightforward: the bar has moved.
Travellers are no longer satisfied with a generic safety email and a 24-hour hotline buried in a PDF. They want clearer guidance, faster support and a genuine sense that someone is watching the radar.
And if they don’t get it? They may well vote with their feet.
The report suggests duty of care is evolving from a compliance function into a cultural one, a signal of how much an organisation values its people beyond the office walls.
The new business travel reality
There’s no dramatic conclusion here, just a quiet recalibration.
Business travel is back, but it’s not the same beast it was before the pandemic. The world feels less predictable, travellers feel more exposed, and expectations have shifted accordingly.
For the travel industry, insurers and employers alike, the Zurich findings serve as a timely reminder: reassurance now matters as much as reliability.
And in an era where every journey carries a little more uncertainty, that reassurance might just be the most valuable travel perk of all.
by Christine Nguyen – (c) 2026.
Read time: 3 minutes.
About the Writer.
Christine’s story is one of quiet courage, told without fuss and lived with remarkable grace. She arrived in Australia as a young refugee from Vietnam, carrying little more than hope, family, and a curiosity that refused to be extinguished. Sydney became home, built patiently, brick by careful brick.
She studied Tourism at TAFE and soon found her place in inbound travel, working with one of the city’s leading destination companies. Christine loved showing visitors the Australia that lives beyond postcards, warmer, truer, and far more interesting.
When the sea began to whisper, and life asked for a gentler rhythm, she listened. Designing brochures, writing blogs, she discovered storytelling waiting quietly inside her.
Today, at Global Travel Media, Christine writes with warmth and wisdom, softly and persuasively, reminding us why travel still matters.
