Let’s imagine (although it may not take much imagination) a conversation between a CEO, passionate about efficiency, allergic to reports longer than two pages, and a young Travel Risk Manager.

Let’s call them Mark and Sarah.

Mark: Sarah, I opened your quarterly report and immediately noticed an entire section dedicated to climate change. I thought I had hired a Travel Risk Manager, not a Greenpeace activist.

Sarah: Mark, I understand your reaction. But let me reassure you right away: I’m not here to talk about melting glaciers. I’m here to talk about cancelled flights, flooded hotels, employees stranded at airports without assistance, and clients waiting in meeting rooms for people who never arrive.

Mark: Bad weather has always existed. My father was a sales representative back in the 1980s, driving around Italy in his Fiat Croma, and he certainly didn’t need a Climate Risk Manager.

Sarah: Your father wasn’t in Dubai in April 2024, when 254 millimetres of rain fell in just 24 hours. To put that into perspective, Dubai normally receives about 97 millimetres in an entire year. The airport was paralyzed for days, and the streets turned into rivers. We would have had three colleagues stranded there for four days.

Mark (straightening up in his chair): Four days. And what does that actually cost me?

Sarah: Between last-minute emergency hotel bookings, full-fare airline tickets for rescheduled flights, lost productivity, and crisis management, we’re talking about €8,000 to €12,000 per person. That’s without considering the meetings with Gulf clients that were cancelled and, unsurprisingly, never rescheduled.

Mark: So we’re potentially talking about €36,000 because of one rainstorm.

Sarah: One rainstorm that an early warning system (such as KRION by Kriptia, we might add) would have flagged 72 hours in advance. More than enough time to postpone the trip or adjust operational plans.

Mark: Fine, but Dubai is an extreme case. We can’t stop travelling every time the weather looks a little uncertain.

Sarah: Absolutely not. The point isn’t to stop travelling. The point is to make decisions based on data, not surprises. And the problem is that these “extreme cases” are increasingly becoming the norm. The summer of 2023 was Europe’s hottest in the last 2,000 years. In 2024, wildfires in Canada, Portugal and Greece shut down entire regions for weeks. I had three colleagues scheduled to travel to Athens in July: red-zone air quality, diverted flights, and evacuated hotels. And the summer of 2026 has been no different—in fact, it began with unprecedented climate emergencies across Europe.

Mark (raising an eyebrow): Air quality? That’s something I have to worry about now too?

Sarah: Mark, during extreme heatwaves some cities reach AQI—Air Quality Index—levels classified as “hazardous.” For an employee with asthma, cardiovascular conditions, or simply someone over fifty, that’s a genuine health risk. And that brings us to the point that should really matter to you as CEO.

Mark: Which is?

Sarah: Legislative Decree 81/2008. Workplace health and safety regulations also apply to employees travelling for business. If an employee suffers harm during a business trip and the company has failed to carry out an up-to-date risk assessment—including climate and environmental risks—the company itself may be held liable. This isn’t science fiction: European courts have already established precedents.

Mark (after a long pause): So you’re telling me that, on top of the financial damage, I also face legal exposure.

Sarah: Exactly. Climate is no longer just background noise. It has become a structural risk variable, just like geopolitical instability or health crises. The difference is that we already have protocols for those. For climate-related risks, in most companies, we don’t.

Mark: So what exactly are you proposing? Because if your answer is “let’s stop travelling from May to September,” my answer is no.

Sarah (laughing): The answer is much more practical.

Three actions.

First: integrate a Climate Risk Score into the assessment of every destination, alongside the geopolitical risk score we already use. Seasonality, historical trends of extreme weather events, and local infrastructure resilience.

Second: implement real-time monitoring of destinations where employees are travelling, with automatic alerts based on OSINT intelligence and qualified meteorological feeds.

Third: update emergency response protocols to include extreme weather scenarios, not just political or public health crises.

Mark: And how much does all this cost?

Sarah: Considerably less than four days with three managers stranded in Dubai. Compared to our annual corporate travel budget, we’re talking about a tiny fraction.

Mark (tapping his fingers on the table): Do you know what strikes me most about this conversation?

Sarah: What?

Mark: Twenty minutes ago, I thought climate change was something for people debating whether to buy a hybrid or an electric SUV. Now you’re telling me it’s already a cost sitting in my budget—I just wasn’t accounting for it correctly.

Sarah: Exactly. The risk isn’t new. We simply lacked the right label to recognize it as a business cost and manage it accordingly.

Mark (smiling): Alright, Sarah. Let’s include it in the plan. But I have one request.

Sarah: Go ahead.

Mark: In your next report, could you avoid using the word “ecosystem”? Every time I read it, I picture a National Geographic documentary and completely lose focus.

Sarah (laughing): Deal. I’ll use “integrated corporate climate risk management framework” instead.

Mark: Worse. Much worse.